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Mortal Wounds: Getting Beyond Superficial Treatments to the Heart of Your Child with Steve Arterburn | 850

Current Events, MomStrong Parenting

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How do you respond when your 12 yr old son is caught in a pornography addiction? The answer may surprise you! Join me today as my guest, Author and speaker Steve Arterburn joins me today to tackle questions from listeners and offer a giveaway from his newest collaboration: Kirby McCook and the Jesus Chronicles!

Transcribed version of podcast is below.

Today’s Scripture Writing Challenge Verse

  • Philippians 3:8-11

Resources Mentioned in Podcast

All Things Heidi

Join us at MomStrong International for our newest Bible Study and Scripture Writing!

Submit your questions to MailBox Monday.

Steve Arterburn is the founder and chairman of New Life Ministries and host of the # 1 nationally syndicated Christian counseling talk show “New Life Live!” heard and by 2 million people each weekday on 200 radio stations nationwide and on Sirius/XM radio. Steve is the Teaching Pastor at Northview Church in Carmel, Indiana. Steve is also the founder of Women of Faith conferences attended by over 5,000,000 people.

As a nationally and internationally known public speaker, Steve has been featured in national media venues such as Oprah, Inside Edition, Good Morning America, CNN Live, The New York Times, USA Today, US News & World Report, ABC World News Tonight, along with GQ magazine and Rolling Stone magazine. Steve has spoken at major events for National Center for Fathering, American Association of Christian Counselors, Promise KeepersCanada, Life Well Conferences in Australia and The Salvation Army, to name a few, and is an inductee to the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame.

Steve is a best-selling author of books such as Every Man’s Battle, Healing Is A Choice, Toxic Faith, Walking Into Walls, and his latest books, the Arterburn Wellness Series featuring titles including Understanding and Loving a Person with Depression, Understanding and Loving a Person with ADD, Understanding and Loving a Person with Sexual Addiction, Understanding and Loving a Person with Drug or Alcohol Addiction, and more. With over 11 million books in print, he has been writing about God’s transformational truth since 1984. He has been nominated for numerous writing awards and won three Gold Medallions for writing excellence. Along with Dr. Dave Stoop, he edited and produced the award winning Life Recovery Bible which is on exhibit at The Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.

His speaking topics address issues common to leaders and adult men and women, including Take Your Life Back, Every Man’s Battle, Lose it For Life, The 7-Minute Marriage Solution, Every Heart Restored, Healing is a Choice and Pro-Life. Steve’s ministry endeavors focus on identifying and compassionately responding to the needs of those seeking healing and restoration through God’s truth.

Steve has degrees from Baylor University and The University of North Texas as well as two honorary doctorate degrees including one from The California Graduate School of Theology. Steve resides with his family in Carmel, Indiana.

Connect with Steve: New Life Website | New Life Radio | Steve on Facebook | New Life Facebook | Steve on Twitter | New Life on Twitter | 1-800-NEW-LIFE

Don’t Miss These!

TRANSCRIPTION:

[Heidi] Hey, everybody. This is Heidi St. John. Welcome to the podcast. Today is Wednesday, November 27th. This is episode number 850 and today we’re going to be taking your questions with a special guest on the show with me today. Steve Arterburn is here today. He is the founder and chairman of New Life Ministries and the host of the number one nationally syndicated Christian counseling talk show New Life Live!, Which is heard by two million people each weekday including myself on 200 radio stations nationwide and also on Sirius XM radio. Steve is also the teaching pastor at North View Church in Carmel, Indiana and the founder of the Women of Faith conference. We’re going to have a great conversation today. 

Stick around. I think you’re going to be encouraged.

All right, you guys, do you know what’s coming up on my calendar? First of all, thanks to everybody who’s been writing in and asking about the upcoming events. I will be in California in just a couple of days. If you want information on where I will be, please see the show notes today and you will find the directions for the church and also the start and stop times for that event. That’s coming up the first Saturday in December and we’re excited about that. Also, have a brand new study coming up at MomStrong International, and if you have not joined the community of women who are studying God’s word with me, I want to encourage you to do it. Now’s a great time to jump in. We have a brand new format coming up starting in January. And we’re going to finish the year strong with a brand new study that we’ll release on the first Monday in December. So we’ve got 14,000 of you studying with us over there, so hop on over there so hop on over to MomStrongInternational.com. 

Without further ado, I want to introduce Steve to you today. You guys remember that last week I had my friend Marcus Brotherton on the show and we were talking about his new book, Kirby McCook and the Jesus Chronicles. And Marcus had mentioned to me that Steve was a co-author of this book, which is really exciting for me just to have Steve’s voice in it. So we’ve invited him to come on the show and he’s also going to stick around and answer a couple of your questions. So Steve, welcome to the podcast.

[Steve] Thank you Heidi. Great to be here and I really appreciate all you do because man, if there was any segment of the world that needed strength in what they do, it’s moms. Oh my goodness.

[Heidi] Yeah, it’s really true. And really the family, oh my goodness. We’ve seen the family under such attack in recent years. And I really appreciate your heart to bring a biblical perspective to the issues that we’re facing in real time. So I got kind of a burning question for you. How in the world, and this is kind of what I said to Marcus too, how did you guys decide to go from what… Because you’ve done every man’s battle. You’re known for really hitting hard topics and coming at it from a solid biblical perspective. And then Marcus is known for writing about the grace generation and war heroes and then the two of you jumped into Kirby McCook. And I was like, I’d said to Marcus, I said, “Wow, that’s a little bit of a departure”, but it was great for me to hear his heart to say, “We got to figure out a way to engage kids with the Bible.” So how did you get involved in this project?

[Steve] Well, first of all, it is really something different for Marcus. It’s not so different from me. I have, I’ve written several series for kids and I actually, for Tyndale, I’m the editor of their NLT Kids Bible, and then just done a lot of different projects for kids. My first degree was in elementary ed and I was so grateful that Marcus signed on for this because no one could have done this better than him. But the idea came… My son is, he’s 13. When he was 10, he inherited his mother’s IQ. And he goes to a school where everybody is, their IQ is about 140 or more.

[Heidi] Whoa.

[Steve] And they’re all really bright. Well, when I took Solomon to Greece, the people there said, “I think your son knows more about Greece than we do, at age 10.” And it was because of these Rick Riordan Greek mythology books that are so fun and funny, and he’s read them all. And so he says to me one day, “Dad, how come there aren’t any books about Bible characters, real people and the real God versus all these fake Greek gods?” And I said, “Great question.” And from my past when I was in the third grade, Mrs. Mendel back then, you could actually read the Bible in school. And she, after lunch we’d put our heads in our desk and she’d read these old Testament Bible stories. So I knew how much I had learned from those stories. So all of that goes together to me talking to Greg Johnson who knew Marcus, we get together and we come up with this great guy, Kirby McCook that’s 12 years old, who knows a lot about the Bible. He’s funny, his friends are funny. We get an illustrator that does these off the wall illustrations and we’ve come up with something.

Of course it would never be this without Marcus. We came up with this book that what we hear from people is “My non-reading son finished it in one setting.” They’re 52 stories. They’re funny, chapters like Jesus Spits, things like that: but here’s kind of the headline: And that is that when a child, eight to 12 years old reads this, they come to understand in a very real way that Jesus didn’t show up in a barn on Christmas about 2000 years ago. That’s the overriding message that Jesus, everything was made through him for him and by him. And so that’s a big thing. But the other thing is the great theologian Francis Schaffer said this, he says, “The gospel needs to be re-communicated into each new generation.” And that’s what this is. If kids just look at the Bible as an ancient document for old people, it has no impact. But they are being impacted by the truths that they’re uncovering in these stories that are really funny.

I mean, I have these mothers say, “And my daughter’s just sitting there, she’s laughing out loud and the subtitle, a 12 year olds take on the totally unborn, slightly weird stuff in the Bible, including fish, guts, wrestling moves, and stinky feet.” Here’s a way that a parent or a grandparent not only can get kids to access God’s truth, but you look really cool in the process.

[Heidi] Well that’s something we talked about is just bringing your A game. Like so many people, particularly this is happening in the church where we sort of give the leftovers to the kids and Marcus was saying, “No, we don’t give the leftovers. We’re bringing our A game,” which is really what you guys are doing.

[Steve] From the illustrations, the different things that are attached to it. It really is an amazing project and I’m so grateful that we’re able to speak into these kids’ lives. I’ll tell you what we’ve done at New Life and of course New Life is my organization and it’s a not for profit, but we’ve told people the book is $17.95 I think retail is hardcover, $17.99, so I’ve told people “You call 1-800-NEW-LIFE, give me the name of the child that you want this for. Donate $20 to New Life. And I will personally autograph it to them with something mature like… Dear Bobby, hope you love our book. If you don’t, please don’t tell anybody.” And I’ve been autographing and we’ve been mailing directly for parents and grandparents to these kids. And so if anybody’s interested in that, it really is… 20 bucks covers the shipping in the book and all that.

[Heidi] Well tell us, tell me again, tell the listeners again how they can do that because I know they’re going to want to get in on it.

[Steve] Just call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Tell them you want to make a $20 donation and you give them the name of the child and then the address, your address if you want to give it to them or if you want us to send it directly, we’ll do that and it’s done. It’s that simple.

[Heidi] That is fantastic. So I know people are going to take you up on that. Also we are giving away a copy of the book today here at the podcast. So if you guys are interested in getting in on the giveaway, we’ve only got one copy. So he’s going to go fast. And if you want to get an autographed copy, I should have talked to you before see, because I’d given away an autographed copy. I love this though, to donate to New Life. That’s a fantastic way to support your ministry and also get this book into the hands of kids.

And it seems to me you and I share a passion for seeing parents really step up to the plate and to begin the process of really truly discipling our children and not leaving it up to somebody else. We shouldn’t be leaving it up to the pastors, the youth pastor. Parents are the primary educators and the primary disciplers of their children. And this is a really great tool in the hands of parents, right? So you can get your kids in and have them sit down with you and really engage with them. I love that it’s funny. It’s not boring and the Bible is not boring. The Bible is anything but boring. And I think somehow we’ve made it boring. I’m not sure how we did that.

[Steve] Well I do think that it is full of life. And I think what we’ve done here is, the Kirby McCook and his friends that he teaches, that’s just kind of the structure, that’s the environment we created, the fictional environment in which the truth is presented in a really unique and creative way. And I think that where some people fall apart in their parenting is they really mean well and they want to do things. And so like maybe they’ll say, “okay, we’re going to do a devotional every day before you go to school” and it’s so boring. Or it’s just not where your kids are living. And so this I really believe will be something that you’ll say, “Okay, this is easy.” And at the end of each chapter, if you want to do some more with each one of the stories, there’s some little notes here, there’s a verse that, it’s great for memorizing. And then there’s some other verses you can go to to really get a little bit deeper into it. But every one of these stories is very easy for you to take it and just talk to your child. But maybe you have a child doesn’t really like talking about stuff. They just want to read things. That’s okay. Let that be, don’t run… Don’t cram something down their throat when maybe they would just enjoy a nice book that they read on their own. But I think if you look at Amazon, you see the reviews that are there, you’ll realize that this is really something special and I am absolutely thrilled to be part of it.

[Heidi] Well, I hope you guys keep going. I asked Marcus the other day if you were thinking you might make it into a series and he’s like, well I guess we’ll see how the first book does. So I hope everybody will go out and buy it. Check it out. Such a great opportunity for parents to get the truth of God’s word into the hands of kids with a character that’s going to be relatable and funny to them. I love that. I want to switch gears just a little bit because this episode airs on Wednesday and on Wednesdays I like to answer questions from listeners and I thought, “Man, I’m going to take advantage of the fact that I’ve got Steve Arteburg on the show with me.” This is fantastic. And just get your thoughts on a couple of things that have been rattling around in my heart and my head and certainly lots of questions coming in from listeners.

And one of them is the story that broke about two weeks ago now about comedian John Crist and his sexual addiction, and the fact that there were several people that were kind of pulled into this thing. And then the question comes, what can we learn from this? I guess that might be a great way to frame this. What can we learn from this? How can we as the church both learn to respond to it in a way that’s godly? But also what can we take away so that we can protect our own families and our own marriages. What were your thoughts on the story as it developed and broke?

[Steve] Well, there’s so many stories like this. The sad thing is not that they happen. Usually the sad thing is the way that people react or respond to them. Typically in a big church situation, my friend Dave Stoop and I have been on many committees and brought in as consultants to churches—and what you see happening is a lot of covering up and trying to kind of minimize the impact. Then often you’ll see two or three, the hero elders or hero deacons that are going to save the church. You know, they’re going to fix all this and make it okay. And really, what they’re doing is they’re maintaining their access to a powerful figure and they’re really not doing it for the church. They’re doing it for themselves. They think they’re doing it for the church and for God and greater purposes, but not really. And so you have to let them run their course if they’re in charge and then finally you get down to, we have to deal with the reality here.

And the big thing is when people say things or when you see things that don’t add up, you need to act on that and not minimize or overlook it. Because the earlier you deal with something the better. I guess in John’s case, probably this, the problem was known to be a problem for maybe four years, but too bad. All he had to do at any point was call 1-800-NEW-LIFE and go to the Every Man’s Battle Intensive that we do. There are people that have been struggling for years, ever since they were kids and they, and they spend this intensive weekend with us and these Christian counselors and they develop brothers in the battle. They got support, they’ve got a plan and the big catastrophe is avoided. I mean some of my biggest donors are people that give to New Life because they’re not paying child support because we help them keep the family together and we dealt with it before it got out of hand.

So I would just say this, it is such a prevalent problem that the latest Barna poll said probably 60 percent of the men that show up in church on a Sunday are struggling with this. Now there is no other problem that 60 percent of men are struggling with. And my wife does a group, it’s a sexual integrity group for women and almost every one of the women there, and every woman there under 30 struggles with pornography and that just wasn’t true 20 years ago, even 10 years ago. So it’s a very big problem. Very common. The question is if you have the problem that so many other people have, what are you going to do? You’re going to try harder?— doesn’t work. Going to try to keep it a secret?— doesn’t work. Question is: are you willing to get some help?

And it doesn’t have to be a public help. You can get anonymous help. People come to us. Pastors come to us all the time. Nobody ever knows they ever came, what they did there. It’s all confidential. What’s not confidential is when you don’t take care of it and then you’re served divorce papers, or you’re let go from your position, or like in the case of John Crist, everybody comes to discover the problem. And there’s so much hope, so much help, but you have to be willing to humble yourself, ask for the help, and then go get the help.

[Heidi] That’s so important. I got a letter from a mom named Kelly a couple of weeks ago and she said, “Heidi, we recently discovered our 12 year old son is viewing pornography online. He had already had his electronic privileges taken away for attitude and lying, but when we uncovered him hiding an iPad in his room, we then discovered the pornography he was viewing. We thought we had safety parameters in place for this, but apparently we were wrong or he found a way around them. Other than putting better parameters in place, how should we handle this moving forward? How would you handle discipline from this when he was already on restriction?” I get this question in various forms all the time. I think it hearkens back to what you were just saying, which is this is an epidemic. This is pandemic in the United States, which I think largely due to access on the internet. And I get letters like this all the time from parents. So what kind of hope can you offer Kelly and the other parents who are listening and finding themselves in similar situations?

[Steve] Well, most likely if they’re having to ask this question, they’re not going to like the answer that I have. And if they don’t like the answer that I have, I don’t think there is a lot of hope and here’s what I’m talking about. A child that’s 12 that gets caught viewing pornography, inappropriate images, whatever, and then their phone is taken away and all the screens are taken away. It is so devastating to them and so painful that most of them will do whatever it takes to prove to their parents, I’m not involved with this anymore. I want the freedom of my phone and screens. That’s the response that you want, doesn’t matter how they fell into it, whatever. It’s pretty common. So when you find it and you confront them with it, you want them to feel ashamed, make promises. You want to restrict more, absolutely.

You want to try to inflict consequences without making them feel like they’re the worst, most shameful person in the world. That’s really important. Okay, so their son, they did that and he didn’t respond to that. Well, why wouldn’t your first question be, how do I find a great Christian counselor for my son? I mean, why wouldn’t that, why don’t people just think, “Hey, this, this is beyond us. This is a character defect here and if we don’t jump in here at 12, we’re going to be dealing with this at 14 and 24.” I really do think that there is an ability to become addicted to pornography. I really believe that. Now why? Because whether you inject a chemical, if you experience a mood altering experience with whatever you have hormonal stuff and chemicals that are secreted in the brain. It’s all chemical anyway. And if you could cut off all pornography from this addicted kid, he would probably find something else to produce whatever it is that produces that relief or that high. So let’s go get him some help. Let’s find out where the disconnection occurred. Why doesn’t he respond to normal consequences? Why is he so persistent? I mean, if this boy lived in my town, I could tell you exactly who he needed to go see and I would be very confident that that person would help him and the parents turn this around. Counseling is not for weak people. It’s not for sick people. It’s for people that have trouble with something and here’s this great resource, this great asset of the church, and it ought to be your first… first thing is: where do we find this person that knows how to help us with this because there are no quick fixes, no instant solution.

There is no book you’re going to read that’s going to help you fix this in this child. Your child needs some deeper help. Let me give you a verse. It’s Jeremiah 6:14 says this, Jeremiah said this few thousand years ago, “They treat the mortal wounds of my people with superficial treatments,” and now you don’t want to be doing that. You don’t want to be putting a bandaid on something or thinking, Oh, this is a stage or a phase. You want to jump in there early, early on and get the help that can turn this around. And we don’t blame the parents, we don’t shame the parents. It’s so common, but it’s your responsibility to respond to this at the appropriate level and more discipline, more punishment, more restriction is not going to fix the character problem that needs to be developed from the inside out.

[Heidi] Well, and that brings me to a question about biblical counseling versus a secular counseling. And we do a lot of this here at the show also is moving people toward biblical counseling. Can you explain the difference? So let’s say a parent listening to this right now and he or she is saying, “You know what, Steve’s right, I’m going to have, we got to get help.” A, where do they find help and how do they find it? And then B, does it matter? Should they be looking for a biblical counselor or will just any counselor off the internet work?

[Steve] Well, first of all, if it was my 12 year old, biblical counseling would be of no value to me if it was delivered by an 80 year old woman to my 12 year old son, right? So what I want is I want somebody that can help my son grow in character. So what I want is I want a Christian counselor who is licensed, trained, I mean top of their game, who will uphold the values that we uphold, someone that’s not going to think, “Oh, it’s not that bad or whatever.” So I need somebody that’s special, that’s a Christian, that’s not just really good at talking to people, but has a license and has been trained. And when you get a license from a Christian college in counseling, you get good solid Bible background and foundation. So I want that person, but I want that person that specializes in 12 year olds. That’s a big headline for me, got to be a Christian that’s going to uphold the values, got to be licensed and needs to be, this is their specialty.

Now, let’s say in my area, I don’t have any Christians. Well, is there somebody that specializes in young people? But even though they’re not a Christian, they’re not going to care, they have the same values. Maybe they’re Jewish and they have the same values. Well, I’d rather, again, go to that person than an 80 year old biblical counseling woman or man. So we got to be sensible here and I don’t start with biblical. I start with, I want to try to get him to see a Christian who is really good at connecting with 12 year olds and I want them to have a license. I want them to be at the top of their game.

[Heidi] And where do we find these people? I mean, is there like a, I keep thinking, I’m hearing about this and is there a registry? Do they just, are they just doing a search for their areas or a place where, I mean, I guess in a perfect world to be great if a Steve Arterburn started a brand new project and you could come up with a database.

[Steve] No, it started 31 years ago.

[Heidi] Well there you go.

[Steve] And you call 1-800-NEW-LIFE and you tell them what you need and they’re either going to tell you in our network of 1300 Christian counselors, we have somebody in your area that specializes in that or we don’t. And if we don’t, we talk about what are the options because there are a lot of options today that didn’t exist. If you’re in Nome, Alaska, you know you can do some things online, face to face with folks rather than do nothing.

[Heidi] Well that’s fantastic. So I love that. In fact, I’m going to link back to this phone number. For those of you who are driving and you know whatever in the show notes today, 1-800-NEW-LIFE. All of this, this is also where you call if you want to get the Kirby McCook book autographed and sent to you for a donation of 20 dollars, and is there, where else can we find you online? Because you’re a busy guy. I was telling your assistant before I started recording, I was reading your bio and I said, “I can’t actually read this whole thing. It’s going to take up the whole show,” because I said, “When does Steve take a nap?” She said, “Yeah, he doesn’t.”

[Steve] I sleep on airplanes, but I actually a lot of stuff I like to do, which is raise a family and before I did this I ran my daughter’s school bag to school that she forgot. But anyway, just call 1-800-NEW-LIFE and we’ll help you with all of that and any of that. And I really want to help folks. I love hearing years later, you know it all began with a phone call and here’s what happened.

[Heidi] I love that. I love that. Well for more information on Steve Arterburn and his fantastic ministry to families, please check it out in the show notes today at heidistjohn.com/podcast. I will link back to all things Steve Arterburn. Thank you so much, Steve, for coming on the show and encouraging listeners today, and I wish you the best with your brand new book, Kirby McCook.

[Steve] Thank you so much and God bless you and thanks for all the great stuff you do and I hope that you feel encouraged because you’re really making a difference with a lot of folks that need you, especially those moms.

[Heidi] Thank you so much. I appreciate that and I’ve been encouraged by everything that you’re doing. In fact, I was sitting here writing notes furiously while you were talking, so it’s wonderful. I appreciate what you’re doing. For more information on Steve Arterburn, again, please visit me online, heidistjohn.com/podcast. We’ll link back to the giveaway for Kirby McCook and the Jesus Chronicles and also information on New Life Ministries. Thanks for listening everybody, and I’ll see you back here on Friday.

Write to Heidi:
Heidi St. John
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Support this ministry by donating through E-giving. You can also send donations to: 1100 NE34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

 

The Key to Successful Homeschooling: Reading Aloud! — with Steve Lambert | 849

Homeschooling, MomStrong Parenting

Podcast (hsj): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:17 — 20.8MB)

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Are your kids bored with learning? Uninterested? Are you struggling to breathe life into your homeschool? Are you dragging your feet at the beginning of your homeschool day? Join veteran homeschool dad and speaker, Steve Lambert as he and I talk about one of the best ways to build relationships and encourage a love of learning in your home.

Transcribed version of podcast is below.

Today’s Scripture Writing Challenge Verse

  • Psalm 1115:6-9

GIVEAWAY

  • Info will be added once live. Go follow @HeidiStJohn on Instagram—the giveaway will be posted there.

Resources Mentioned in Podcast

All Things Heidi

Join us at MomStrong International for our newest Bible Study and Scripture Writing!

Submit your questions to MailBox Monday.

Steve Lambert has worn many hats in his 68 years: Pastor, author, speaker, stockbroker and more. Together, he and his wife Jane Claire Lambert created and publish “Five in a Row” homeschool curriculum which has been a homeschool mainstay for nearly 25 years. They began homeschooling their children in 1981 and today their seven grandchildren are being homeschooled as well and range in age from 18 months to 18 years.

Don’t Miss These!

TRANSCRIPTION:

This podcast is brought to you by our friends at Evangelical Christian Credit Union

Hey everybody. This is Heidi St. John. Welcome to the podcast. Today is Monday, November 25th. This is episode number 849. It’s mailbox Monday and I have a treat for you guys today. In the studio with me is my friend Steve Lambert. We’re going to talk about how to make homeschooling great again. 

Stick around. I think you’re going to be encouraged.

All right you guys, thanks for tuning in today. Really love the reviews that are coming in. Also, can I just pause for a moment and say thank you to everybody who’s sending me Christmas cards. All right? So, I’m already getting a whole bunch of them. You guys are on top of it. Thank you for participating in Christmas card Palooza here at Firmly Planted Family. If you’d like to participate, we would love to hear from you. This is a great time of year to do it, to sort of let us see the faces of the people that are listening to this podcast and we’re going to put your pictures up on the wall here at the Firmly Planted Family Homeschool Resource Center in Vancouver.

So at the end of the podcast I will give you guys the address for that again. So thank you so much for doing that. Also, a couple of things that are coming up. I am going to be speaking in California next Saturday and you guys already know that the place to find that is HeidiStJohn.com/events. But I wanted to let you guys know from what I understand, this is going to be … well it’s a Christmas tea and hello, can we all just say Christmas together? I will be at Godspeak Calvary Chapel and I know it’s going to be a great time. So come on out. That event starts at six o’clock in the evening and I cannot wait to see you. For more information on that go to HeidiStJohn.com/events.

Also, we have a brand new study. We’re going to be studying sanctuary for the month of December and what does it mean to have … to see our relationship with the Lord in the light of being a sanctuary? What does it look like to worship God that way? And so you guys are going to love it. It’s going to be a great study. Join me for that. That starts on the first Monday, which will be December, 2nd.

All right you guys, this is mailbox Monday and I love that you guys are sending us so many questions. Remember what I said last time, when you submit questions to the podcast, it really helps me if you will say really briefly what it’s about. So, it’s about homeschooling. Maybe it’s about marriage. Maybe it’s about parenting. It can be something that’s detailed, like maybe you want a specific type of parenting. Maybe you’ve got an issue with pornography. If it’s a one word thing, that’s great and then a couple of sentences that tells me what’s going on and what your question is that helps the staff kind of go through those questions and categorize them.

Today we’re going to be spending a little bit of time talking about homeschooling, particularly as it relates to reading and the importance of reading aloud. This is a fantastic time of year to start reading aloud to your kids because hello, it’s winter time weather coming up. So it’s hanging around the fireplace. It’s sitting around the couch season. And no person … There’s no person I can think of on the earth that’s better to talk to you about this than my friend Steve Lambert. I’ve been hanging out with the Lamberts for a long time and in fact they podcasted with me when I was still a podcasting from my closet many years ago and now we’re in the studio. So Steve Lambert, my friend, welcome. You’re here in Vancouver.

[Steve] Yeah, we’re excited to be here this weekend. It’s fun to be here with you.

[Heidi] So you guys came for the play. So we did Anne of Green Gables and you liked it, right?

[Steve] What a remarkable opportunity for those children, for the audience, for … It was just an amazing thing and I love Lucy Maud Montgomery. We love Anne Green Gables. We’ve watched the Megan Follows movies so many times.

[Heidi] That’s the best one.

[Steve] It really is.

[Heidi] The Megan Follows version, hands down. If you’re going to go to Amazon or Netflix or wherever, Megan Follows is the one to see.

[Steve] For sure. Yeah.

[Heidi] And not the new ones.

[Steve] No, no, no. That’s the one. So we … knowing your kids for all these years and knowing that several of them were in the play, we had to come out to see it. And I’m so glad we did. It was a wonderful, wonderful thing. And to see what’s going on here at the resource center is just remarkable.

[Heidi] Yeah. It’s changed a lot, because you guys haven’t been at it for almost a year, I think, right? It’s been awhile.

[Steve] Yeah, it’s been about a year probably.

[Heidi] Yeah. And the resource center grown. Here you are in the studio. This is fun.

[Steve] I know. This is way better than your closet. Little roomier.

[Heidi] Little roomier. Not having to fight your way through the dresses and kick the shoes out of the way.

[Steve] Exactly.

[Heidi] Yeah. So this is better. I know. I’m appreciating it. You guys have been hanging out with us for a long time since well, way before Sailor was ever even born.

[Steve] Yeah. About 12 years, I think, we’ve been hanging around together now.

[Heidi] Yeah. And we met you guys when you came out to speak for … Because I was thinking it’s been a long time since you’ve been on my podcast and there’ll be a lot of new listeners who don’t know who you guys are. And I think it’s fun to sort of introduce. Like I had Mark Brotherton on here a couple of weeks ago. We went to college together and we were like, yeah, back when mullets were cool. So I met you after the mullet years.

[Steve] Yeah, yeah.

[Heidi] But before the resource centers. So kind of in that space. But you came out to Spokane to keynote an event and Jay and I were in charge of a homeschool conference at that time as I … Am I right, as I recall?

[Steve] Yeah, no, that’s exactly right. Somebody, a mutual friend had recommended me and you hired me. And Jane and I came out and that’s where we got acquainted. And we’ve been hanging around together ever since.

[Heidi] That’s true. We met over breakfast as I recall, and I’m not sure that you thought that I was in charge of the conference or not. Jay and I, it seemed like we didn’t quite meet your expectations.

[Steve] Well the presidents and the organizers of most State Homeschool Conventions are empty nesters whose kids are grown and gone and now they’ve got time to, you know, donate and coordinate for the state and help younger families. And somebody said that, you know, your name was Heidi and I thought well that’s a name from the 1950s, that makes sense.

[Heidi] Old German lady.

[Steve] And that you were coming in your motor home. I didn’t know that it was, you know, just a kind of a beater motor home. So I envisioned you as like full time, you know, snowbird retirees. And then to meet at breakfast and there you were 30 something years old. And I said, I think as I recall, I said, you know….

[Heidi] Where is your parents?

[Steve] Yeah. “Are your parents coming down soon because I need to talk with your mom before we start the event this weekend.”

[Heidi] And things just got better. They just got better from there. I think it’s fair to say.

[Steve] Yeah, for sure.

[Heidi] Well, and you guys are better known for, and Janem writing a curriculum, Five in a Row, which you guys began publishing, what, over 25 years ago.

[Steve] Yeah.

[Heidi] And that curriculum has been used by bazillions of kids for all these years and it’s rooted in unit study. Right? And what a joy that is for kids to be able to learn in a way that’s not stifling, not stuffy, not boring. One of the things we love to talk about here is just how to make education anything but boring, which it shouldn’t be boring, right? Because there’s so many things to learn about and Jane has really done a good job of capturing an entire generation of homeschooled kids in particular. So you guys have a brand new edition. The second edition of Five in a Row is out. And I kind of want to talk to you about reading out loud because that’s really the basis for Five in a Row, right? Is reading to kids and getting them involved in the stories and making those stories come to life.

And there are so many moms who write to me every single week here at the podcast and there’s no life in their homeschooling and they’re bored and they call their kids down for school and the kids are like, do we have to do that again? And before 9:00 in the morning, mom’s already tired. She’s already burned out, she’s gone through, you know, three workbooks and there’s no life in it.

And you have a really interesting and I think life-giving approach to homeschooling that really stems from reading out loud with your kids. Kind of something that we have a hard time doing right now because our faces are in our laptops and our iPads and our phones. And so I wanted to sort of go that direction with you today and see if you can help me encourage some of these moms that are listening, because it seems to me, and you and I have had this conversation a lot, this generation of homeschool moms are not like the generation 25 and 30 years ago.

[Steve] Very different.

[Heidi] Very, very different. What do you see that’s different right off the top of your head? When you look at a mom who say her oldest kid now is five years old as opposed to 25 years ago, what do you see happening in the homeschool movement?

[Steve] Well, I think that the, you know, there’s no saying about comparison is the death of contentment.

[Heidi] Yeah.

[Steve] So there are so many…

[Heidi] Thank you Pinterest.

[Steve] Exactly. So yeah, you need to take the pledge to stay off of Pinterest if you’re homeschooling because…

[Heidi] There should be a pledge for that.

[Steve] That’s right.

[Heidi] That’s really … We should make a website Steve.

[Steve] Yeah.

[Heidi] Takethepledge.com.

[Steve] That’s it, take the pledge. We’re off of Pinterest because you know, back in those early days, we were all kind of pioneering. I mean, we began homeschooling in 1981 and probably most of your listeners weren’t even born in 1981 and that’s kind of awkward. But it was a very different time. And so today the pressure is so much on these parents or they sense that it is in terms of academic achievement and well my neighbor’s child is already doing Chinese and Latin and English and they’re only four.

[Heidi] Right, they play five different instruments.

[Steve] Yeah. Exactly.

[Heidi] They can juggle while they play them.

[Steve] Exactly. And that’s just … It takes all the life and all the joy and just sucks the enjoyment out of the process that God intended to be a joy for you and your children. And instead it turns into this Mortal Kombat kind of a thing that’s not so fun. So yeah, Jane wrote Five in a Row and it was first published in 1994. So 26 years, almost 26 years ago. We’ve had about 600,000 children use it in about 60 different countries and most of them here in the United States. But it’s based on the concept of reading aloud with your child. And out of that comes all the different topics. So, rather than having a history book and a geography book and a science book, you discover history and geography and science as you go.

And you know, the naturalist John Muir said, “In nature you can begin anywhere and you’ll eventually end up everywhere,” because the whole world is interconnected. So when we systematically slice and dice academic information into categories, it’s really like trying to enjoy a teaspoon full of Sanka frozen.

[Heidi] I haven’t had Sanka in a while.

[Steve] Yeah. So, well I’m old, you know, so what do you have now? Folgers frozen crystals. No wait, isn’t there a … Doesn’t Starbucks have some kind of an instant?

[Heidi] They do. Like a freeze dried.

[Steve] Yeah, so like just taking the freeze dried powder and putting it on your tongue and enjoying a nice cup of coffee because there’s no life in that.

[Heidi] Right, yeah.

[Steve] And so reading opens those doors and disarms kids because the first thing that almost every child wants to do is to sit on your lap and have you read a wonderful story.

[Heidi] Well, so here’s a really great question because I know that there are moms listening to this and they’re like, yeah, but that’s not school. Like this is so much of the issues that we get, right, is a mom who feels like she’s not doing it if she hasn’t opened her, you know, her workbook to the 13th lesson of the language arts curriculum workbook. And then we need all these workbooks. We need …and really what I have discovered, because I’ve been homeschooling now for coming up on 25 years, what I’ve been discovering, because I started out that way, we typically do with our children what was done to us, right?

[Steve] Yeah.

[Heidi] So if we went to school and we got, you know, three or four different workbooks shoved in our face every day, and we, you know, we had recess at a particular time. A lot of these moms are bringing their kids home from school and they’re trying to recreate school at home. And then they’re shocked to discover that their kids are bored, that they’re burned out, that they’re stressed out. And what you have discovered long before I did and what I discovered, you know, probably I wish, I mean to really laid into it, I wish I would have … someone would have held my hand when I was much younger as a homeschool mom. That there’s so much life in reading and what you just said is right. I mean what you’ve just described is a unit study, right? So you’re taking a book and through reading that book, you’re able to talk about the history of the character and where they were and all of a sudden it’s science and it’s the language arts and all these things are coming to life and the kids get an emotional investment because you’re reading a story to them.

There’s a reason that Jesus told parables, right? He knew we would remember them because you have this emotional connection to whatever it is you’re reading about. And really that’s kind of the magic behind Five in a Row. It’s having the kids they become invested with the character in the story. And you can kind of put yourself in the story. A lot more life giving than here’s your workbook, open to page 14 and here’s your timer for 20 minutes and mom will come back and check it and then we wonder why our kids are burning out.

[Steve] Yeah, no, that’s exactly right. And kids understand that that becomes largely an exercise primarily for type A moms to be able to check off their to-do list. That there’s no life in it. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that as well. I mean if I were to give you your fifth grade social studies test today and ask you, you know, who signed the Magna Carta.

[Heidi] No, please don’t do that.

[Steve] And who is the Norman Conquer, when did the Norman Conquest take place? You’d say, you know, I remember talking about all those things in fourth grade or fifth grade, but the truth is I just learned them long enough to take the test and then I forgot it. When your kids are just like you. So they learn to play the game as well. And the game grows stale quickly.

[Heidi] Yeah.

[Steve] And so rather than doing school at home, homeschool is an entirely different proposition and you know, there’s more and more information. I told some people the other day, if you only read one book this year, I’d encourage you to read a book called The Enchanted Hour by Meghan Gurdon. She is a children’s book editor for the Wall Street Journal. The book just came out this year. I’ve poured over it twice. Can’t recommend it highly enough. But it unearths the science behind the value of reading aloud, the connections that it makes, the neural connections. There’s mounting evidence, a significant research that suggests that reading to your child in utero actually helps their academic achievement.

Why would that be? Well, because we speak differently than the written word. We have a different cadence, a different rhythm. And so when you read aloud, even before your child is born, it associates that sound that it loves more than any other, the sound of his mother’s voice, comforting and safe with the rhythm of the written language. And it predisposes them then to become interested readers later on, and to be more energetic when it comes to reading. So even for infants, they’re now discovering the value of children going to the nursing homes and reading to elderly parents.

[Heidi] Well there’s so much value in that.

[Steve] Yeah.

[Heidi] And not even just for the elderly, right? But for teaching our children these people are important. We don’t, you know, we don’t cast them away because they’re in nursing homes. You know, we’re investing and we’re spending time and wow. So it’s like a double blessing. It’s a blessing for the elderly person that you’re reading too, but also a blessing for the kids.

[Steve] There’s new programs now to have … to arrange to take books into prisons, to have prisoners read stories aloud to their children who are outside. To have military families stationed overseas have an opportunity to read books aloud that are sent back home for their children to listen to because it builds a common literary legacy and a history together that you then share the same lines, same story, same characters, same, all the same settings and places that you’ve read together. And that stays with you for a lifetime. And children. You know, if you’ve noticed little ones, you know, two, three years old quickly began to kind of quote, read the book themselves. They’ve memorized word on every page and they want you to read…

[Heidi] Yes, and then the mom thinks that you’ve taught the kid to read, but really they’re just reciting to you.

[Steve] Exactly. They’re just reciting, but they will often want you to read the same book 10 times in the same day or 10 nights in a row at bedtime. And so capitalizing, leveraging that reading intimacy that reading produces. Somebody said once, if you want to … The two single best investments you can make to improve the quality of your homeschool experience is to get a library card and a more comfortable sofa. And if that’s all you do is sit on the sofa together and read books, you’ve got a huge jumpstart on most of your friends who are using workbooks and textbooks and trying to have tests every Friday to memorize.

[Heidi] Well, I’m going to stop you right there because I think you just hit on probably the most important thing we’re going to say all day, which is that when you invest in your kids, when you’re reading aloud to them, you’re not wasting time. This is not a waste of time. And I feel like this …What’s happened is, you know the homeschool mom who feels all this pressure, this academic pressure, and I’m not knocking academics, but I feel like boy we push it too soon on our kids. We put too much emphasis on it and we decide that reading out loud is something that we can do if everything else gets done.

So, if you guys get your math done, and your language done, and your history done, and your writing done, then if you’re really lucky, mama will read to you. And this is the reward. And I think what I hear you saying, and certainly what my husband and I discovered over 25 years of homeschooling our kids is it is the thing. We spent many years in the mornings just reading to our kids. So my kids would, you know, get out of bed and there’d be cereal on the counter for them or whatever it was, and we’d come and we’d sit on the floor, they’d be in their nightgowns oftentimes. This is where the joke, you know, homeschoolers homeschool in their pajamas.

What better time than in the early morning to sit around with your kids? We read missionary stories. They loved stories as simple as Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, which we read over and over again. The lessons you can learn. You know, someone says, that’s a child’s book. You know, there’s some fantastic lessons that we can learn in these children’s books. And really, and you talk to my kids now, which four of them have graduated from our homeschool. The things that they remember the most about our homeschooling is the reading aloud that we did, that we did for so many years.

And the investment that you’re making, the return on that investment is so much greater than if you were to just throw a workbook in front of them every day and say here’s what you’re going to do, 20 minutes for this and 30 minutes for that, which you’re right, it’s the type A homeschool mom that feels like this is the checklist. And I think what I hear you saying is let’s envision the checklist differently.

[Steve] Yeah, that’s exactly right Heidi. And it’s, you know, as you said, rather than using the reading aloud as the reward at the end of the day, it’s a great way to set an entirely different tone. You know, come sit by momma, sit on my lap, let’s read a story together, shall we? Is a whole different flavor then I hope that you did your homework last night, now turn to page 48 in your workbook and we’re going to have a pop quiz this morning.

And there are, you know, the skill areas of learning. Things like reading mechanics and mass skills and penmanship, those are things that require a systematic approach, a sequential approach to learning, but all of the rest of the subjects, I mean science and history and art and the humanities, all of those, there’s no particular sequence in which to learn those things. You don’t have to know anything about the weather before you study insects in science. You don’t have to know anything about the Peloponnesian Wars before you learn about World War II. So you tackle those subjects as they come up in the course of life and reading and you create a legacy that goes far beyond this semester or this year or even high school graduation. But a legacy that lasts a lifetime with your children.

[Heidi] Yeah, because they’re going to pass it on to their kids.

[Steve] Yeah, exactly. There’s a lot of … There’s a new study out right now called the 3 Million Word Deficit or something that suggests that if you don’t read aloud to your child, by fifth grade that child is already 3 million words in deficit to other kids who’ve been read to and it reflects in vocabulary. It reflects in fluency, literacy. Just in a dozen different areas. And so reading aloud to us became the foundation of education. And so what happens is, you know … You know, Jane and I were just talking the other day and I said there’s that old saying about you can buy a man a fish and feed him for today or you can teach a man to fish and he can become self-sufficient. And that’s the problem with what education has historically been in this country, whether it’s in classrooms or in homeschool, is that we’re buying a man a fish. Every day where we’re buying stacks of workbooks and textbooks each year, and then we use the pages and have to throw them away and buy another stack for next year.

And we are hand feeding these children when if we could just teach them how to fish for themselves, to teach them how to fall in love with learning, teach them how to become fluent readers, teach them how to discover and access resources and to nurture the natural curiosity that God placed inside our children that makes them want to learn, until we strangle that out, usually about first grade. But I think the average two year old, I read, asked something like 460 questions a day or something like that.

[Heidi] Yeah, that’s a starting point.

[Steve] God creates them to want to learn and they’re excited about it and so by…

[Heidi] Until we squeeze it out of them.

[Steve] Exactly. So by opening books, opening the world wide to them and letting their curiosity engage and letting them ask questions.

[Steve] You know the best days that Jane ever had homeschooling our kids were the days when the kids would say, “Mama, how come so-and-so?” And she’d say, “I have no idea. What a wonderful question. Where would we go to find out?” So education…

[Heidi] That’s so important for homeschool moms listening to this. You don’t have to know all the answers.

[Steve] No absolutely.

[Heidi] If your kids come to you and they say, mama, I don’t understand this, you can go, you know what that’s a great … I love that. That’s a great question. Let’s look it up. Let’s figure it out. And you’re demonstrating for your child you don’t have to know all the answers. We can learn together.

[Steve] Now you’re becoming a resource person. You’re becoming a coach.

[Heidi] Yes, which is life giving.

[Steve] Completely different relationship than the traditional classroom model of I’m the teacher, you listen, you be quiet. I do the talking and we’re going to have a test and see if you paid attention on Friday.

[Heidi] There was a woman who wrote to me a couple of weeks ago and she said that she had given up on homeschooling and she put her child back in school because she was just so glad to not be her child’s teacher anymore. She could focus just on being a mother.  And my initial thought, this isn’t what I said to her, but my initial thought was to say, you weren’t doing it right because this role of mother and teacher, they are intertwined from the moment your child is born. You are both the mother and the teacher.

And what the culture has done, the culture has divided those two roles up so that parents feel like, oh, the teacher at the school does that and I’m just the parent. But really that’s not how God intended. God made us to be both parent and teacher. They really are intertwined. And when you realize how intertwined they are and how beautiful that intertwinement is, it becomes life giving as opposed to here now I’m going to put my teacher hat on and here’s your assignment, one, two, three, four and your timer and the chore chart and all those.

I mean, I’m saying this stuff with such passion because I did it this way for so long and I burned my kids out and I burned myself out. And it wasn’t until we started going— okay, there’s got to be a better way. And for me it started with missionary stories. You and I have had this conversation a lot.

[Steve] Yeah, right.

[Heidi] I was introduced to missionary stories and I started reading biographies to my kids and all of a sudden the kids would wake up in the morning, come running into the living room and, “Mom, I’ve got the book. Can we … You know, I got the book and you know, Bullet Trios and can we sit down and read?” And I went from my kids just, you know, me dragging them into, you know, here’s your workbook, here’s your assignment, to running into the living room in the morning, couldn’t wait to sit down, wanted to hear what happened next in the story. And that became life-giving.

And that was the moment when I realized, oh, I don’t take off my momma hat and put my teacher hat on. I wear them all the time. And that is life giving. And you’re right, it goes on to the next generation.

[Steve] No, that’s exactly right. If you stop and think about a traditional classroom model, it is by definition an adversarial relationship. You sit on opposite, facing opposite directions. The teacher’s desk faces South. Every student’s desk faces North.

[Heidi] Yeah.

[Steve] And the teacher is in charge of doling out information and the children’s responsibility is to be quiet and to sit and keep their hands to themselves and not interrupt the teacher. And then the teacher has the power to hold them back next year, give them a test on Friday, whatever.

[Steve] That’s, I mean, that’s just a recipe for disaster when you try to apply that traditional model of classroom and do school at home because you know what you need to do is get on the same side of the desk.

[Heidi] Yeah, the couch.

[Steve] We’re in this together on the couch. We’re in this together. We’re going on a learning adventure together. You know, God’s the ultimate multi-tasker and any mother who’s homeschooled more than six months will tell you that on any given day, the person who learns the most in a homeschool classroom is not the child, it’s the mother.

[Heidi] It’s the mother. That’s right, that’s right.

[Steve] And not only are you learning about things that you never learned or you learned and forgot, but God has a unique way of dealing with some of your character issues and you find your children there as constant little living witnesses to remind you, “you know, mom, why do you always wait till the last minute to do things? Momma, why do you get so angry and lose your temper?”

And so God’s molding your children’s character while he’s molding your character and together you’re going on a learning adventure that will last for a lifetime if you can get away and break away from that model that has been ingrained in a classroom.

[Heidi] Man, I just needed that so. So, tomorrow when I start school, I’ll have a better attitude.

[Steve] Absolutely.

[Heidi] I’ll have a better attitude. If people want to find out about Five in a Row because really this is the core of what you and Jane have been doing for all these years now, is to really have these books come alive and you’re teaching mothers is what you’re doing. You’re teaching mothers how to make these books come alive for their children and they turn into the most amazing mothers/teachers for their children as they take their kids along on this learning adventure. Where can people find you? It’s Five in a Row.

[Steve] That’s right. www.Fiveinarow.com. And you can go to our website there. We have materials for children from about age two up to about age 12. Beyond that in secondary school, children are beginning to go off in different directions and some are going towards pre-med and some are going towards journalism. But the foundation that every child needs from birth up to about age 12 or so is that foundation to learn to fish for themselves, to learn to develop their God-given curiosity, to become self-motivated learners, to love reading, to love books, to love God’s creation and to know how and where to go and find the information they need.

You know, we live in an information saturated society. It’s not that we lack information anymore, it’s that we lack the discernment, what’s important, what’s not, what’s a distraction. And so those are the skills that we teach kids through Five in a Row. We’ve been around now 26 years. And it’s just a fun way to teach kids and most of our…

[Heidi] It’s relationship building.

[Steve] Yeah.

[Heidi] I think that’s what I love about it the most. The focus is not so much on the academics, they’re going to get that part.

[Steve] Absolutely.

[Heidi] But the focus is relationships. And I’m telling you what, having several kids graduated from my own homeschool, now I’m watching my daughter shepherding her own kids, it’s the relationship that you want to foster more than anything else. So long after you close the last page of your math book, long after you’ve done the very last thing on the very last day that you’ve been doing for 18 years or whatever with your kids, you want them by God’s grace to call you up and ask you for a crock pot recipe and want to come over for dinner and want to hang out and tell you about what’s going on in their life. And you’re laying that foundation right now every day with the choices that you’re making with your kids.

[Steve] That’s exactly right. And you know, I’ll be 70 on my next birthday. I’m not a spring chicken anymore. But you know, the Bible says that it’s appointed to each of us to live once and to die once and somewhere God in his eternal appointment book has an appointment with me for death. And when we, you know, when we all get to that point, when you’re laying on that hospital bed and that little monitor is beeping and your family is gathered around and your children, your grandchildren are crying, your children are not going to look at you and say, oh mama, mama, I just wish we could go back and you could tell me these diagram sentences just one more time and you’re not going to be thinking…

[Heidi] Right. I sure wish I could do lesson number 20 in that Saxon math book.

[Steve] Yes.

[Heidi] We shouldn’t have skipped it that day.

[Steve] Exactly. And you’re not going to be saying, you know, I could die a happy woman and meet my maker if I just knew for sure that you understood quadratic equations.

[Heidi] Right.

[Steve] What you’re going to say is, “momma, I love those times that we read those stories. I’ll never forget when we read Little House in the Prairie. I’ll never forget when we read Grandma’s Attic or I’ll never forget that when we read” whatever. And those are the memories that lasts for a lifetime. Those are the memories that build relationship and relationship exists long, long after the last pop quiz is over.

[Heidi] That’s so good. It’s a great way to wrap it up. This is Thanksgiving week.

[Steve] I know. Exciting.

[Heidi] It’s Thanksgiving week.

[Steve] Family time.

[Heidi] Yeah, and there’s never been a better time. You can pull your kids around and you can read to them. You just did this with my daughter the other day, right?

[Steve] I did.

[Heidi] Sailor brought you a book.

[Steve] I did. I said, “Sailor, is there a book you want to read?” And she went and brought me a book.

[Heidi] Yeah.

[Steve] And you know, that’s your chance by the way, mom to be Meryl Streep or you know, whoever. To put on your best drama and if you can pretend to do a nice Texas drawl or an Irish accent, or whatever it is, just to make the book come to life. That’s the fun way to do it. And kids eat that stuff up.

[Heidi] Yeah. I watched Sailor sitting on your lap. She’s nine years old now and she’s still just was like, she’s just so drawn in because you took the time. You know, I think this is so much of it. I took the time and so often we don’t want to take the time. Right? We got more important things to do. We got to check Facebook after all. You know, you never know. Someone might need your opinion, right? And so you guys have demonstrated in such a beautiful way, this is a great time to be thinking about this and talking about this. People can find you guys at fiveinarow.com. 

Steve Lambert, my friend, thank you so much for coming on this show. It’s always a joy.

[Steve] Always fun to be with you, Heidi. Thanks so much.

[Heidi] For more information on Steve and Jane Lambert and Five in a Row, please visit me online, HeidiStJohn.com/podcast. I will link back to all things Five in a Row in the show notes today.

Also coming up in January, I will be from the 4th through the 12th at the FPEA Marriage cruise. I am told that that particular cruise is sold out, but they have cabins available at a regular price. Just want to be sure and let us know that you’re coming and we will link you into the group activities.

On the 24th and 25th of this month, I will be speaking for the THSC Homeschool Moms Winter Summit in Frisco, Texas. And on the 31st I will be at the Homeschool Mom Winter Summit in Houston, Texas. So, I’m going to be getting on my Southern drawl a little bit this year. Starting out my year at the bang in the Southern part of the United States.

Want to let you guys know that the podcast was sponsored today by our friends at ECCU. As moms, it’s hard to think about our kids growing up. We’ve been talking about that today, right? What are our kids going to remember when they grow up? It’s hard to think about them growing up and going out into the world on their own. And one way to do this is by teaching them about money management early. Our sponsor today, ECCU, has designed special accounts and debit specifically with your kids and their parents in mind. You’ll breathe easier knowing that you’ve helped your children develop stewardship and godly values about money. Check them out at ECCU.com/Heidi.

Thanks for listening today everybody. Have a great Monday and I’ll see you back here with my friend Steve Arterburn on Wednesday. 

Write to [Heidi]
Heidi St. John
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Support this ministry by donating through E-giving. You can also send donations to: 1100 NE34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

 

“Faith on the Edge” with Pat Roy and Kyle Justice—PART TWO- 848

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There’s a new wave of Christians converting to a belief in the flat earth, and it’s having a serious impact on our world. Are you equipped to give Biblical and scientific answers to questions that will inevitably come from family and friends? Join me for PART TWO of my interview with Pat Roy and Kyle Justice!

Transcribed version of podcast is below.
Today’s Scripture Writing Challenge Verse

  • Isaiah 55:1-3

Resources Mentioned in Podcast

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Submit your questions to MailBox Monday.

Pat Roy served at the Institute for Creation Research for 12 years as the Director of Broadcast Media. It was during this time at ICR that he and his wife created the Jonathan Park audio dramas, a creation-based audio drama heard by millions around the world. They recently created a new audio drama called, Time Chroniclers. Pat has served as Director at Genesis Apologetics. He has traveled the nation speaking to hundreds of audiences, of all ages, about the importance of trusting God’s Word. 

Kyle Justice: Emmy nominated producer Kyle Justice began producing television projects as a teenager, which led him to work for and produce programming for major cable networks such as The Family Channel, ESPN, and National Geographic. In 1997 he partnered with Ken Ham at Answers in Genesis to produce the first creation kids show, “The X-Nilo Show”. This eventually led to him establishing Awesome Science Media, a prolific producer of creation science media used by homeschool families and aired throughout the world. Kyle is the homeschool dad of eight kids and married to Dawn since 1991.

Connect with Pat and Kyle: “Faith On The Edge” | The Creation Guys

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TRANSCRIPTION:

[Heidi] Hey everybody, this is Heidi St. John. Welcome to the podcast. Today is Friday, November 22nd this is episode number 848. It’s Meet My Friend Friday and as promised, I’ve got two fantastic guys back on the show with me today. We’re going to be talking about the topic of Flat Earth. Pat Roy and Kyle Justice are here. They have a brand new documentary out called Faith On The Edge. This is a fascinating topic. Today, we’re going to hit the biblical aspect to a defense for a round Earth. 

Stick around, I think you’re going to be encouraged.

All right you guys, so a couple of things coming up on my schedule that I need you to know about. First of all, please do not forget that Thanksgiving is coming up. Nobody likes that. Send a card to your mother, at the very least. I hope you guys have a wonderful Thanksgiving. We’re going to tail back… curtail rather I should say, the podcast just a little bit next week, to give you guys a little bit more breathing room. Really excited as we usher in the holiday season here at the podcast. And it is the most wonderful time of the year, because hopefully we get to focus on everything that we’re thankful for. I always love it when we come out of the Halloween season, right? Just get me away from October 31st and into a season of thankfulness and snow flurries and all of those things. So we’re excited about that.

I’m going to be speaking at Godspeed Calvary Chapel in California on Friday, December 6th, for their women’s tea, their Christmas tea. Kind of kicking off the holiday season there, really excited about that. If you are in the area… Actually, I didn’t have the city. But if you’re in California just go to HeidiStJohn.com/events and see if you’re going to be California-ish around where I am. I’d love to see you.

My schedule is pretty full for 2020 and I’m hoping I’m getting out to your neck of the woods. If you’re interested in hosting my women’s conference, Faith That Speaks, we would love to hear from you. I would also love to hear from you if you’ve got a question for Mailbox Monday. Especially, it might be a great time to submit those questions to Pat and Kyle, and I can get them to them. We will link back to how you can get ahold of these guys, in the show notes today. They’re having an incredible impact in the culture.

Last Friday, you heard me introduce them as really just sort of at the top of their field, really researching this issue of Flat Earth. I told you that when I first heard about it I was like, “This is not going to catch on.” And it is, because we are living in a generation that is really questioning everything. If we don’t come at things from a biblical worldview, the Bible says we’re going to be disappointed, sorely disappointed and definitely deceived. That’s certainly been the case with this issue.

If you missed my introduction last time, briefly, Pat Roy, kind of a legend here at the Firmly Planted Homeschool Resource Center. He helped us, he and Kyle actually, helped us build the studio that we are sitting in right now for the podcast. Pat served at the Institute For Creation Research, for 12 years. He was the Director of Broadcast Media. He is also the creator, along with his wife, of Jonathan Park. So some of you guys are like, “I knew that name was familiar.” That’s why. Jonathan Park was a creation-based audio drama that was heard, literally, by millions around the world. And now they have a brand new one called Time Chroniclers. This guy is a very special part of the Firmly Planted Homeschool Resource Center, and I hope you guys will check out what he’s been working on. I’ll link back to it, in the show notes today.

Kyle Justice is also here. Kyle is a little bit of a funny man, which is part of why I like having him. He’s also an Emmy-nominated producer. He began producing television projects as a teenager, which led him to work for and produce programming for major cable networks such as the Family Channel, ESPN, and National Geographic. He is a prolific producer of creation-science media used by homeschool families and aired throughout the world. Kyle is a homeschool dad of eight kids, married to the lovely Dawn Justice since 1991. Hey guys, welcome back to the show.

[Pat] Thanks for having us.

[Kyle] Yeah.

[Heidi] I’m glad you guys are here. So tell me, you got any Thanksgiving plans?

[Kyle] Oh my, it’s always busy in a Justice household.

[Heidi] Yeah?

[Kyle] We usually do one event at our house, which is in the evening and then we go over to my folks during the day. So, we have two meals.

[Heidi] Oh, my goodness.

[Kyle] One year I over-ate and boy, I was pretty sick.

[Heidi] Oh, yeah. No kidding.

[Pat] Boy, none of us have ever done that before, Kyle.

[Kyle] I have to pace myself, you know?

[Heidi] Pace yourself. Pace… Just don’t eat.

[Kyle] Yeah.

[Heidi] Actually, this is a great time. I mean it’s Friday-

[Kyle] Sure.

[Heidi] … so you could just stop eating, like right now.

[Kyle] Yeah.

[Heidi] Then by Thursday…

[Kyle] Yeah.

[Heidi] … you could eat all the food you wanted to and it won’t affect you at all.

[Kyle] I’ll be starved.

[Pat] Ah.

[Heidi] It probably will still be a net loss for you.

[Kyle] Yeah.

[Pat] Yeah.

[Kyle] Good idea, Heidi. Thanks. 

[Heidi] You’d be half dead.

[Pat] I double-dog dare you.

[Heidi] I know. He’s like, “Good idea. Not really, you’re stupid. Moving on.” Yes. Well, we’ve got… I actually didn’t say, you were a homeschool dad, too. Right, Pat?

[Pat] Yes, as well.

[Heidi] That’s not in your bio. We need to fix that.

[Pat] Yeah, that’s true. All the way through.

[Heidi] You’re a homeschool family, all the way through. I know that it’s important to you, this issue of education. The Bible says in Luke 6:40 that, “When a student is fully trained, he’ll be like his teacher.” I think it’s important for us, as parents, to acknowledge what’s happening in the culture and to be able to come at everything that is coming at us, from a biblical worldview.

The Bible teaches us that, “God’sWord is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.” This issue of Flat Earth is really no different. God’s Word is the lamp, even for this issue. I really want to kind of start the conversation off today by just talking a little bit about that. Because obviously, you’ve done your homework on this and I want to just ask you guys to, for our audience, sort of outline a biblical defense for your position. What do you say from God’s Word, to someone who comes up to you and says, “Hey, I think that the Earth is flat”?

[Pat] Yeah. You know, Heidi, I think this is the pivotal issue. Because I think most people in the Flat Earth claim, “If you just believe God’s word, you’ll see that it’s flat. The Bible has over 200 verses that say it’s flat.” This is what they claim. “The Bible is a Flat Earth book, from cover to cover,” is what they’ll tell us. And I think that that’s what sucks a lot of Christians in, is they start to read some of the verses and they go, “Wow, they’re right.” Then their challenge is, “Who are you going to believe? Man and NASA, or are you going to believe God?” If you’re going to believe God, just read his word and believe it’s flat.

[Heidi] Who are you going to believe? Man and the Hubble telescope…

[Pat] Right.

[Heidi] … or God’s word?

[Pat] Right, exactly. So, I think that this is very important. Heidi, when you start looking at the scriptures, we went through the 200 scriptures, what we found is that most of them really don’t have a whole lot to do with the Flat Earth. Right? They just latch onto a word here and there. But there are several substantial verses that actually seem to talk about their Flat Earth model. Now, remember what they say about the Flat Earth. They believe it’s a disk. Okay? So, they believe it’s like a Frisbee. They believe that there’s a hard dome over the top of that.

[Heidi] So you can’t fall off it?

[Pat] You can’t fall off of it, because there’s impassable ice mountains.

[Heidi] So, we’re like in the Truman Show then?

[Pat] That’s right. It’s a terrarium, is what they’ll say.

[Heidi] Okay.

[Pat] As a matter of fact, that’s one of the things they’ll say is, “Do you want to believe in your ball that’s hurdling through space or do you want to believe that God created a terrarium for us to live in?” So, that’s one of the things that they’ll say.

[Heidi] I feel safer already.

[Pat] There you go.

[Heidi] Terrarium versus ball of fire hurdling through space. Yeah.

[Kyle] Just a big rock.

[Heidi] You’re converting me already.

[Pat] There you go. Whoops.

[Heidi] Whoops.

[Pat] But there are several scriptures that do point out that there are some things that go along with their model. For example, Isaiah 40:22 says that, “The Earth is a circle.” Okay? They point out that it’s not a ball. Isaiah 41:9 says that, “There’s ends to the Earth.” Psalm 104:5 five says that, “It’s immovable.” 1 Samuel 2:8 says that, “There are pillars of the Earth.”

[Kyle] Under the Earth.

[Pat] That’s correct.

[Kyle] Yeah.

[Pat] That, “There’s pillars under the Earth.” They believe that the Flat Earth is sitting up on pillars. Job 37:18 says that, “The firmament is like a molten glass,” that it’s actually hard. So, they say that we are under this dome. So, a lot of people began to read these verses and they say, “Wow, they’re right. The Bible says that the Earth is flat.”

[Heidi] That’s fascinating. I’m literally speechless, because I can’t get the idea of a terrarium out of my head. I’m so sorry. I have a terrarium at my house right now, the frogs are…

[Pat] We are nothing but lizards.

[Heidi] I know. We are nothing but, yeah, amphibians. So, what’s your defense? When they read these verses to you, if somebody doesn’t have a working knowledge of the word of God, then it’s pretty easy to go, “Okay,” if you don’t want to do your homework. So, what do you say when you come back at this? Because right, we want to always… This what I’m always telling people, because I teach a Bible study here every Wednesdays from MomStrong International. I always tell people, “Let scripture interpret scripture. This is the most important thing. We’re not looking to outside sources, we’re looking to scripture.”

I will say in this case though, the obvious outside source is just the Earth itself. I have a really hard time believing that the Hubble telescope is lying to me and that all these images that we’ve seen for all these years is just a conspiracy theory. But I understand that we’re questioning basic science right now. We are questioning male and female, whether or not you can change gender, which I also thought, “This is pretty settled science.” But you’re saying the settled science, it’s not settled at all.

[Kyle] Well, you got to remember that since Darwin came out with his Origins book in 1859, there’s just been mass movement of “science” that is all evolutionary anti-Bible.

[Heidi] Yeah.

[Kyle] And so, a lot of the ideas of science that might be used to prove a round Earth, they kind of throw that out, along with NASA, and say, “Let’s get back to the word of God and see what it says.” But a lot of it has to do with context of scripture.

[Pat] Right. A matter of fact, Heidi, I love this verse and I think this is so important. 2 Timothy 2:15, “Study to show thyself approved unto God. A workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of God.” Well, what does that mean? Well, here’s what we found. As we looked into every single scripture that they use to support the Flat Earth, every single one of them is metaphorical. Okay? So now they say, “Take the word of God literally, take it literally. Take it literal, literal, literal, literal,” is what they’ll say. Okay? Which really sounds great. Because as Bible believers, we want to take God at what he said. Right? But think about all of the different ways, all of the different literary styles that God has got in His word. There’s historical accounts, like Genesis and Exodus, and we’ve got statutory, like the giving of the laws. We’ve got poetry…

[Heidi] Poetry, yeah.

[Pat] … like in Psalms and the Song of Solomon. Right?

[Heidi] Mm-hmm.

[Pat] We’ve got prophecies that are metaphorical. We’ve got epistles…

[Heidi] You got allegory.

[Pat] Right, exactly. So, what we need to do is we need to look at the scripture and say, “How is God speaking to us right now?” And when you go back and look at every single scripture that they use, you begin to realize that it’s using metaphorical language. For example, 1 Chronicles 16 that says that, “The Earth should not be moved.” It also says that, “The trees sing.” Okay? So, trees are singing. In 2 Samuel, the one about the pillars, it says that, “God is a rock.”

Now, here’s what I’ve been doing recently because as you can imagine, I’m always talking to hundreds of Flat Earthers all of the time. They always come at me and say, “Pat, just believe the literal scriptures. Just believe what God wrote.” And so, a lot of times I’ll say to them, “Do you believe that the trees sing? Do you believe that rivers clap their hands? Do you believe that God is a rock?” You know what they always answer, is, “No, I don’t believe any of those.” And I’ll say, “That’s great, because otherwise you would be a pantheist.” Right?

[Heidi] That God’s in everything.

[Pat] Right, that God’s in everything. So they’ll say, “No, I don’t believe that that’s literal.” So the next question I ask them is, “Well, now you’ve got a real problem. Because in the same passage, you’re taking some stuff as literal and some stuff you’re not taking literally. What are the rules that you use to decide between when you take something literal and when you don’t?” And guess what? They never have rules for that.

It’s because they want the Earth to be flat. So when they read these passages, they take the trees singing as being figurative. But then when they get to the pillars or whatever, they want to take that as literal. But that’s not a consistent way to rightly divide the word of God. What we need to do is say, “How is this passage written? Is it historical, is it metaphorical?” Then, we need to take it the way that God wrote it. Once you do that, all of their verses disappear.

[Heidi] Yeah. What you’re doing is you’re letting scripture interpret scripture.

[Pat] That’s exactly it.

[Heidi] That’s what you’re doing. And truly, I mean this is where a lot of the issues, I would say 90% of the issues that we’re struggling with in the church right now, have come from so-called Christians who are taking God’s word out of context. We’re having to do theological and doctrinal backflips to come to our position, because we want our position to interpret what the scriptures are saying rather than the scripture informing our world view. And really, that’s what you’re saying. Right?

[Pat] Right, exactly. In fact, Heidi, it kind of reminds me clear back in 1994, that’s how old I am…

[Heidi] In 1994, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

[Pat] There was a Bible teacher who was teaching that the world was going to end in September of 1994.

[Heidi] I remember that.

[Pat] I think it was September 6th, 1994.

[Heidi] Mm-hmm.

[Pat] He wrote a thick book. Now if you read that book, almost every page of that book had scripture on it. So, it looked very biblical on the outside. A matter of fact, the followers came to me and said the same thing that I’m hearing the Flat Earthers say is, “Pat, just accept what the scriptures say.” Then they would hand me the book and say, “Look, it’s all about the scriptures. Why don’t you believe that September 6th, 1994 is the end of the world?” Well, guess what? There was one fact, it was about to completely invalidate their whole belief. That was September 7th, 1994. Right?

So, I say the same thing with the Flat Earthers. Yeah. They’ve put together this thing that looks so biblical on the outside, but when you actually look at it, they’re using their own interpretation of scriptures. And there’s one observable fact that proves that they’re wrong. That’s that we don’t have to go back and prove that the Earth is round or anything, we can observe it right now, in the here and now.

[Heidi] That’s right.

[Pat] So, it’s the same thing. Is that God’s world and his word are never going to be in conflict with each other, because he’s the author of both.

[Heidi] That’s right.

[Pat] Kyle and I even did some experiments on our own, where we actually saw the curvature with our own eyes. A lot of times people say, “Why are you believing NASA over God’s word?” And my answer to that is, “No, I don’t care what NASA says. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

[Heidi] That’s right, yeah. That’s right. A lot of people, I mean, I hate to keep bringing this up, but this goes back to the transgender topic. Right? I feel like the emperor has no clothes. Right? When we talk about this, it’s observable with our own eyes. We can see that there are male and female. And yet, I’ve talked to and been around Christians who are saying, “Oh no, the Bible doesn’t say,” blah blah blah. I was like, “No you guys, we’re twisting… We’re trying to make it say what we want it to say, to fit our narrative.” We got to turn that around and say, “No, the narrative belongs to the Creator.”

[Kyle] Yeah.

[Heidi] It’s His narrative, we don’t get to change it.

[Kyle] Well, and that’s why the whole second part of the documentary, it’s that God’s word should confirm His world. That’s going out and searching things out, and it seems like a lot of the people who believe in the Flat Earth and scripture, that they are not that interested in going out into the world. Even so, if they went up in a spaceship, we’ve talked to these guys long enough that it’s like, “Oh, well…” they might even come up with an idea that, “Well, we were drugged and they put screens on the spaceship and they pretend…” It’s like, come on. Where does it end?

[Heidi] Yeah.

[Kyle] So that’s the thing, is we wanted to go do these experiments. So we got invited, a gentleman who was doing a balloon experiment and sending up a 360 camera, up into the atmosphere about 22 miles, to measure what’s called the fall off. That basically is the horizon, at almost sea level or when you’re close to the surface of the Earth, the horizon should be right about 180 degrees of sky and 180 degrees of Earth. But as you get higher up, if the Earth falls off the higher you get up, that horizon will drop. That’s what he was trying to prove. And before, people would send up cameras, like GoPros, and they would say, “The Earth…”

[Pat] It looks round.

[Kyle] Yeah, “It looks round because it’s a fisheye lens, and that it’s naturally going to curve that way anyway. So, it’s not proof.” But this is not a fisheye lens. This is where it took a 360 image video of the ascent, and they did measurements on this. How far did it go up, Pat?

[Pat] We were just a little over 3% within accuracy of what the known circumference of the Earth is.

[Kyle] Yeah.

[Pat] So, this was an experiment that had never been done before. And to date, nobody has answered that. But it was clear observation that the Earth is, in fact, curved, believe it or not.

[Heidi] Mm-hmm.

[Kyle] Yeah.

[Pat] Heidi, we showed that the Earth was round. Did you know that?

[Heidi] That’s amazing. You sure that the Earth is round? I thought I could do that by just going up in an airplane, but apparently that doesn’t work. You have actual… Do you have a clip for us? Because we talked about this earlier, you did something called… This is the Bedford Level experience, why we can see things over the curve of the Earth. I know that there are a lot of people going, “Wait a second…”

I mean, I appreciate what you guys are saying a lot because we really can trust our own eyes that God gave us. Right? There are things we can’t trust. Mostly, it’s our mind. Right? Because the Bible says that, “Our heart is wicked and our minds are easily deceived.” But creation balances that we’re without excuse, even for evidence of a Creator because it’s all around us. And so, we actually can trust our eyes in a lot of scenarios, for sure. And so, you did this thing called the Bedford Level experience. You have a clip for us?

[Pat] Right. So, one of the guests on our documentary was Dr. Danny Faulkner. He’s a PhD astronomer from Answers In Genesis. He started off by talking about our Bedford Level experiment.

Audio: –Dr. Faulkner, I’ve been researching this whole issue. It seems like one of the most convincing arguments they have is the Bedford Level experiment.

–That’s the thing that really has set all of this off. There was a man named Samuel Rowbotham, he was English. He did a famous experiment in the mid-part of the 19th century. The Bedford Level is a drainage canal in East side of England and it’s a very flat area near the ocean. There’s this one section, just straight as an arrow. If you had an object off in the distance over the curvature of the Earth as you’re looking at it, you couldn’t see it because the curvature of Earth would get in the way.

Now, you can do a simple calculation. It’s an approximation, but it actually works very well for most distances of question here. If you go a mile, you’d get a drop of curvature of eight inches. So, if you mount a telescope eight inches above the surface of the water, then in a miles distance it would be tangent to the Earth surface and then it would start to fall away beyond that. And each mile it’s squared. So after two miles, it would be a four times eight, which is 32 inches, a little less than three feet. Then it would be six feet at three miles, and so forth. By the time you get out to five miles, six miles, the curvature would be close to 20 feet or so.

He reasons that if the Earth is curved, he should not see the boat, he shouldn’t see the person in the boat. He shouldn’t even see the mast with a flag on it. Well, lo and behold, he sees the mast, the flag, the boat, the person. He sees every bit of it. So he concludes that the Earth is not curved. It must be as flat as my desktop right here in front of me, and that way he can see the thing the entire way.

–Rowbotham experiments seem to clearly show the Earth was flat, and that’s what eventually led him to start the Zetetic Society, which was the beginning of the modern Flat Earth Movement.

[Pat] So Heidi, I have spent hundreds of hours watching video after video that’s out on YouTube by the Flat Earthers. Out of everything that they’ve ever presented, to me this is the most compelling argument, is the Bedford Level experiment.

[Kyle] Yeah, I mean, if the Earth curves then… I mean, you can go out to the ocean and watch ships go out and they slowly disappear over the horizon. That would seem that the Earth is curved. But in this case of Rowbotham, he did this experiment and he could see, six miles away, that it was still there. So, that was something that we were really curious about and we actually tried to do our own experiment. And actually, it was successful.

[Pat] Yeah. So, we basically went out to the mouth of the Columbia River and we found a section that was six miles away…

[Kyle] Six to seven miles from the spit, way out by the jetty. Then looking back towards Astoria, near Young’s Bay. What we did was I went out with a very high-power 1200 millimeter lens and I shot it across the bay, and it was…

[Heidi] How’d you do that?

[Kyle] How did I shot it across the bay?

[Heidi] Yeah. When you say you took out your lens, to the mom who’s just like…

[Kyle] Yeah, sure.

[Heidi] So, you have to position yourself a particular way? You’re just going out, an ordinary guy with a high-powered lens and you’re aiming…

[Kyle] Wow.

[Heidi] Can anybody do that? Can I go do that?

[Kyle] Generally speaking, you could. One of the times, we rented…

[Heidi] You would suck at it, but you could.

[Kyle] Yeah. You have a-

[Pat] Well, you’d need a very high-power lens.

[Kyle] Yeah.

[Pat] Then, you also need the weather conditions to be amazing.

[Kyle] Yeah, you really do. On that day, it was in August. We went out and it was beautiful. Actually, it was early September, because we tried a couple of different locations and the one that we show in the documentary was for that. I kind of knew, generally, where Pat was because we could look at a bridge that comes across and meets the land. He was right there, where the land met the bridge. We shot across the bay and I could kind of see over the bridge, but you could really tell that the curvature on the water was happening. Because I couldn’t quite see where Pat was. I had him go up a little bit and down and back and forth, still couldn’t see him. And we thought, “Well, that’s pretty good. I it shows that it’s right.” But at the same time…

[Heidi] And you can’t blame that on a conspiracy over it NASA.

[Kyle] No, no, no. What was interesting is we took a look at the conditions, it was in the 60s, the water was in the 50s, and that actually plays in to how light goes across water, temperature, and so on. But the other thing that we tried to do was to try different experiments, as far as height. Meaning, where my camera was first was about five feet off the water. Then we went up a little farther. Since I couldn’t see Pat, I’m like, “Well shoot, I got to get a little farther up to see him.”

[Heidi] Right.

[Kyle] Even at about 11 feet, 12 feet off the water, I still couldn’t see him. We thought, “Well, it’d be nice to prove that we either can or can’t see him.” What was also interesting is I noticed behind him, about another 150, 200 feet where these radio towers. We went back and we looked at the footage, and sure enough as I went up with the camera, I could see more and more of the bottom of the towers. Which would lead us to believe, optically, if it was curving and I couldn’t see the bottom of the towers because I was lower. But as I went up, I could see them.

[Pat] Okay. So basically what happens, Heidi, is that the Flat Earthers will post these videos where you can see Chicago and they’ll say, “Well, the curve should be blocking Chicago. But the fact that you can see Chicago proves that the Earth is flat.” Then the ball people post their videos that show that the curvature is actually blocking Chicago. Then, there’s even a video that you can watch where Chicago, with a camera running, is jumping up and down, up and down, up and down.

And so, the Flat Earthers come away and show their videos and say, “Ha ha, that proves our point.” The Round Earthers, they show their videos and say, “Ha ha, that proves our point.” Then the people that don’t know watch both sides and they say, “Well that’s funny. Sometimes you can see it and sometimes you can’t, so I guess there’s no real answer to that.” Right?

[Heidi] Wow.

[Pat] But the answer is, and this is explained in our documentary, is it all comes down to the water and the air temperature. When you get the right conditions, you get an inversion layer and the inversion layer can actually bend light. And so, there is a scientific, predictable answer. So the Flat Earthers, they use their videos and say, “Look, this proves that the Earth is flat.” But then there’s not really a way for them to explain when you can’t see around the curve. Right? So they say, “Well, maybe there’s some atmospheric conditions,” but they have no specifics on that. It’s almost like they call out a mysterious force that’s blocking you from being able to see. Whereas the ball Earthers can say, “No, there’s actually atmospheric conditions. We can actually predict when we can see around the curve and when we can’t.”

[Heidi] I think it’s so interesting, we keep going back to the mysterious force. Like when we come up against a wall, it’s a mysterious force. It’s a conspiracy theory or it’s a, “Well, that wasn’t right because this and it’s this mysterious…” And it seems to me like a spirit, because we have the same thing that’s happening with so many of these issues in the culture right now, like transgenderism, like the arguments that we’re making for things that are absolutely unscientific. I think it’s fascinating. Even the abortion topic, right? So, we talk about abortion until we can see these babies. Our eyes don’t lie to us. We see a baby on ultrasound and then, I heard a woman on CNN a couple of months ago say, “Well, that’s not a baby.” I was like, “What?” And it is a spirit of deception.

I mean, we are such a deceived people right now. Like a blanket of deception has fallen over this nation and really, God’s people should be stewards of truth. Am I right?

[Pat] Mm-hmm.

[Heidi] So, we should be shepherds of the gospel, right? Pushing the gospel board. But in the process of doing that, we are also, because the gospel is truth, we are also shepherding and stewarding truth. That goes into every aspect of life. It in the abortion debate, it’s in the issue of transgender. As a man, it’s in the issue of Flat Earth. So many these things which we’re dealing with today. I just thought when you said that, when you’re talking about this mysterious force, well part of me is like, “The mysterious force is no mystery at all.” Right? It’s a cloak of deception. When we come up against it, if we don’t have the Holy spirit, if we don’t have the indwelling power of God’s spirit, then the only answer is, “Well, it’s so mysterious.” You know?

[Pat] Right. And so, Heidi, I know we’re about out of time here, but I just wanted to mention that scientifically, think of all the problems for the Flat Earth model. How do you explain satellites? How do you explain seasons? What are some other things that we tackle?

[Kyle] The moon changing throughout the month.

[Pat] Right. The sunrise, the sunset.

[Kyle] Yeah, yeah.

[Pat] There are so many problems… Matter of fact, Flat Earthers say that, “There is no such thing as gravity.” When you start denying all of these pieces of science, you get into some serious problems. And so Kyle, we found out that the Flat Earthers, all the time, are using rescuing devices.

[Kyle] Mm-hmm.

[Pat] Basically, a rescuing device… Why don’t you explain what it is?

[Kyle] Well, a rescuing devices is that…

[Heidi] I need one of those in my house. Can I have one?

[Pat] They come in handy.

[Heidi] I need a rescuing device.

[Kyle] It’s something that it doesn’t make sense scientifically, and so they come up with some extra thing that… Well, they throw it in. It isn’t scientific at all. Like our universe looks so well designed and yet evolution, it shouldn’t have happened.

[Heidi] It’s chaos.

[Kyle] Evolution, right? So they come up with a multi-verse and they say, “Well, we just happen to live in the universe that has the right, different, physical laws and physics and so on. But there’s other universes that are just totally whacked.” You know? The thing is, it’s never been proven.

[Pat] Right.

[Kyle] It’s just an idea.

[Pat] Right.

[Kyle] It’s a rescuing device.

[Pat] Right, or the origin of life. Right? That non-living materials became alive. There is no answer for that, right? So they say, Well, it evolved possibly on the backs of crystals.” Well, that’s a rescuing device. And as we got into this Flat Earth thing, we’ve noticed that the Flat Earthers have a rescuing device for every single issue that you bring up. But when you look into them, I think they fall apart, scientifically. Usually, they are just jerry-rig rescuing devices to try and get around the fact that the science clearly shows that our Earth is round.

[Heidi] Wow. I know this is a lot of information from people to digest. Like I’m sitting here, my head’s spinning counter-clockwise on my neck right now, just trying to take all this in.

[Pat] I know. It’s been interesting to watch, by the way.

[Heidi] Yes, it’s fascinating. Yes. These are things we love to do, here in the studio. When you talk to people about this and their question always is, “I don’t even know where to start.” How do people equip themselves with truth, if they’re going to get out there and engage the culture? You guys have made an awesome DVD that people can watch and sort of get educated. Because really, you want people to at the very least, be ready for the question. So when someone comes up to you, don’t do what I did at a homeschool conference four-and-half years ago and start laughing, and assume that they’re kidding.

[Kyle] And tell them what they won.

[Heidi] Right, and tell them what they won. I think it’s important that we understand, this is actually happening. I think the same thing is true for so many of the very confusing things that we’re dealing with in the culture today. So how do people equip themselves with the truth?

[Pat] Well, I think, again, I think they usually say, “It’s a biblical issue.” I think it’s important to look through the Bible verses that they use and say, “Is God communicating historical text here or is this a metaphorical passage?” I think it’s good for people to know what those passages are and know why they are metaphorical. And then, scientifically, I think it’s also good just to go out and know why you believe what the shape of the Earth is. Because like you saw in the interviews that we did last week is, you’ll notice that a lot of people, when I ask them, “What evidence do you have that the Earth is round,” most people couldn’t answer that question. So, I think it’s important to answer those questions.

Again, I think you can find those in, “How would seasons work? How does the sun rise, how does the sun set?” When you just look at basic things, you began to realize right away that the Flat Earth model cannot work the way they believe it should.

[Heidi] Well, it’s basic things. I love that you said that. Because really, we’re complicating things beyond what human reason even would support or sustain. We’re doing that in so many areas of life right now.

[Pat] Right.

[Heidi] Again, this is just another area where we really seen the work of deception in the culture.

[Pat] Right. And it’s simple things, just like you said. I mean, just the sunrise and sunset alone. Now in the Flat Earth model, they believe the sun and the Earth are traveling in a circle above the Earth, right? It never sets in their model. And yet, you can go out to a beach or, actually, you could stand anywhere in the world and watch the sun rise and the sun set. Right?

So again, it comes down to a rescuing device and they’ve got to explain all this phenomenon that somehow mysteriously makes it look like the sun’s setting. Well, it’s very clear that the sun is rising and the sun is setting. So…

[Heidi] If you got a homeschool mom who’s listening to this right now, and she’s got a couple of high school kids and she’s trying to figure out, “What’s a good research paper,” if you guys have a project this year. This would be a great one.

[Pat] That is true.

[Heidi] It really would be.

[Pat] That is interesting.

[Heidi] People can get really great information from you guys. I really want to say, just thanks for being willing to get out there and talk about this stuff, and help God’s people become more educated and more… First it’s aware, right, that it’s happening. Then it’s educated from a perspective of God’s word, that it really is backed up with science. Because we don’t, as Christians, need to run away from the science. The science follows us wherever we go, because the science belongs to the Lord at the end of the day. So, you guys are fantastic. Anything else that you want listeners to… Where can they find you online?

[Kyle] Ah. Thecreationguys.com is our main website.

[Pat] And it’s the creation guys.

[Kyle] Thecreationguys.com.

[Heidi] Because you guys are the ones. Yes.

[Pat] You just have to remember to put the T-H-E in there.

[Heidi] I’m THE Busy Mom, so I understand.

[Pat] By the way, Heidi, I appreciate that you are willing to take tough stands and to dive into these kind of issues. Great job.

[Heidi] Well, thanks.

[Pat] Thanks for standing for truth.

[Heidi] You know what? I always tell my husband, “I’ll try anything once.” Let’s talk about this and see how many cannons we can dodge. But I think it’s important, in the culture. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.” And as God’s people, we need to be in constant defense of truth. So, I appreciate it.

[Kyle] Well, and I greatly appreciate what you’re doing here. I think you’ve said it many times, but the enemy is trying to polarize and divide and get us distracted.

[Heidi] Mm-hmm.

[Kyle] And if you run into somebody who believes in the Flat Earth and they keep going, and it’s like, “Well, wait a minute.” There are times through scripture, when God says, “Come, let us reason together.” Right?

[Heidi] Mm-hmm.

[Kyle] Part of, I would hope, that you could say, “Hey, listen. We’re going to agree to disagree here. You know? But what are the things that we do agree on?”

[Heidi] Mm-hmm.

[Kyle] I think that’s really important, is to focus back on Christ and say, “Okay…”

[Pat] I’m so glad you said that, Kyle.

[Kyle] Yeah.

[Pat] Because I think that’s true through our journey. We have learned that, I think, God is more happy with unity than with us being right. There have been so many times when I’ve been in these back-and-forth with Flat Earthers and finally I’ll just say, “Hey, you know what? The shape of the Earth, who cares? We’re both brothers in Christ. Let’s encourage one another. Let’s pray for each other and lift each other up.” 

[Kyle] I think at that point, the enemy’s going, “Ah. Oh, man.” You know?

[Pat] I think so too. Because I think, a lot of times… As a matter of fact, Heidi, it’s sad when you go on Facebook or the internet, you can see the ball Earthers and the Flat Earthers just duking it out. Right?

[Kyle] Yeah.

[Pat] They’re both Christians and you just see that they’re attacking each other viciously. God always calls us to be kind, to be gracious. So, I think unity is super important.

[Heidi] That’s right. Well, I really appreciate you guys coming on and addressing this topic. It’s fascinating. I think it’s interesting to hear. If you guys are interested in more information on the ministry that these guys are doing, can find them at thecreationguys.com. Right, dot com? And I will link that. Is your video on Amazon? Can they get it there or no? Where can they get it?

[Kyle] We’re putting it on in the next month or two, yeah.

[Heidi] All right.

[Kyle] But there are other video on-demand platforms.

[Pat] Right. But if you start at thecreationguys.com, it will actually link you to where you can watch it online. You can also rent it online, if you don’t want to purchase.

[Kyle] Yeah.

[Heidi] Right on.

[Pat] You can watch it just by renting.

[Kyle] Yup.

[Heidi] All right, right on. So, I will link back to that. If you guys are interested in watching the documentary Faith On The Edge, Exploring The Biblical And Scientific Case Against The Flat Earth. Check it out in the show notes today.

I appreciate you guys listening. As always, if you are blessed by the podcast, please leave us a review at the show notes. You guys know that my Christmas card-palooza is on right now and we would love to hear from you. It will encourage our staff here at the Resource Center, to see your faces and hear from you. Just a short note about what God’s doing. You can send us your picture and your Christmas card too Firmly Planted Family, 11100 Northeast 34th Circle, Vancouver, Washington 98682.

Thanks for listening everybody and I’ll see you back here on Monday. 

Write to [Heidi]
Heidi St. John
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Support this ministry by donating through E-giving. You can also send donations to: 1100 NE34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

 

The Pursuit of Holiness + Is Birth Control a Sin? | 847

Becoming MomStrong, Current Events

Podcast (hsj): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:03 — 15.1MB)

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Recently, we have seen startling and serious moral failures of several “Christian celebrities,” and it begs the question: how can we be the men and women God has called us to be in a culture of temptation and sin?  The answer lies in learning to surrender. We are called to be a “set apart” people and God will help us to do just that. I’ll also be answering a question from a listener about the pill.

Transcribed version of podcast is below.

Today’s Scripture Writing Challenge Verse

  • Hebrews 1:1-3

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TRANSCRIPTION:

This podcast is brought to you by MomStrong International.

Hi, everybody. This is Heidi St. John. Welcome to the podcast. Today is Wednesday, November 20th. This is episode number 847. Today’s episode is brought to you by MomStrong International. We are teaching moms to study the word to train up their children to walk in righteousness. Today, we’re going to be talking a little bit about what’s going on in the culture and I’ll be answering some of your questions. 

Stick around, I think you’re going to be encouraged.

So thanks for tuning in today everybody. As usual, thank you so much for leaving reviews for the podcast over at iTunes. I got a special favor to ask today. There’ve been a couple of people leaving reviews that are a little on the obnoxious side over at Amazon for Becoming MomStrong. And so if you guys have read the book and you don’t think I’m a homophobe or a bigot and you haven’t ever left a review for Becoming MomStrong over at Amazon, now would be really good time. Okay, that’s all I got to say about that.

All right, so couple of things happening in the news right now. Obviously, the Democrats are continuing their push for impeachment of the President of the United States. And last week, I ranted a little bit about … there’s a couple of things actually that I ranted about, but I ranted a little bit about my just disgust with the Democratic party here in the United States, and I said shame on them. I have never, and I mean never seen anything like this. The Democrats can’t win at the ballot box, so their only hope is then to hold a Salem witch hunt-style, phony political impeachment hearing. It’s disgraceful, it’s embarrassing and it’s wrong. And I hope that reasonable people on both sides of the aisle will come out in droves next November and teach them a lesson that they’ll never forget. You know what we’re doing with this? We’re teaching our kids that when you don’t get what you want, it’s okay to do anything to get it.

Now, you guys might not like Donald Trump’s style. You might wish he’d get off Twitter or think that he’s arrogant or even impetuous, but he hasn’t done anything that rises to the level of impeachment. Impeachment is a political death sentence. It’s the equivalent to a public hanging, and it should be reserved for true crimes against the nation. So you guys can say what you will. I think the President loves the United States of America, and I’m disappointed and frankly disgusted with anyone on Capitol Hill who would push for this impeachment inquiry. It’s a sad time for our nation’s history, and I hope you guys will be joining me in praying for President Trump. That’s exactly what I am doing. I’m praying for him, he needs our prayers. I literally have never seen anything like this in my entire life. So I hope you guys are praying.

And really, I mean, as I’m watching the pundits sort of throw this thing around, someone said to me on my Facebook page the other day, she said, “Heidi, you shouldn’t have any political posts on your page.” And I was like, “Wrong. This is my page. It’s my prerogative and politics matter. It absolutely matters.” You guys, politics determines policy. Since when did we start saying that we can’t talk about politics? I think part of the reason that we’re in the mess we’re in is because that’s been what we’ve been saying for a long time. We’ve been saying, “Hey, go ahead and be quiet about politics and religion. These are the things we don’t talk about at Thanksgiving. These are the things that we don’t engage, don’t engage.” And so in our lack of engagement, what has filled the vacuum? True fascists like Antifa. Hello, they are the true fascists. You don’t believe me, go to downtown Portland and just watch for a little while. It’s fascinating.

And I believe that the conversation’s important and I think we can have it in a way that brings life. It doesn’t have to be the screaming, yelling thing. So engage, you guys. Don’t be afraid to engage. It’s time for us to begin to engage the culture. I’d love to see Christians in every sphere of influence. I’d love to see us be in medicine. I’d love to see us teaching in the public schools and be on school boards and on library boards and in politics. Christians have the power of the Holy Spirit at their disposal. The Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and so when we have no fear of God, we’re going to have a really hard time doing anything that’s wise. And my goodness, we’re seeing that right now. And so I’m praying, really, I’m praying for our nation. I’ve been thinking a lot about holiness also in light of what happened with John Crist, something else that I have wrote about and have been very passionate about because I think that it’s time for our church to, actually, it’s past time.

It’s past time for our church to have a conversation about living a life of holiness, living a life of holiness. And we’re not really talking about that anymore in the church. And we’re not talking about it enough. I shouldn’t say we’re not talking about any more because I realize that there are some churches that are talking about it. And I watched the saga with John Crist unfold with just sadness. It makes me sad. Another so-called Christian celebrity bites the dust. And we feign that were shocked and we talk about how we need to be forgiving and how we’re all sinners and how, what a hot mess we all are and this is what I’ve been telling you for many years, frustrates me about women’s ministries. We stand around and we talk about what a hot mess we are and we’re drinking too much wine in the evening.

It’s wine o’clock and we wallow in our weakness. Where is our discernment? We’re upset because his public profile and career is damaged. Guys, this is a guy who doesn’t just have a sin issue. This is beyond John Crist looking at porn. This is John behaving in a predatorial way towards women while, all the while saying that he’s a Christian comedian. This is frustrating to me, you guys and it shows the pitfalls of fame and money. But we need to have people in our lives that will hold us to account. The most frustrating thing that I have read in this whole thing is that John Crist said that his team knew about his behavior since 2016 at least, and they let him carry on without so much as a, “hey, our guy is a predator warning”. Wrong on a hundred different levels. Why is this happening? Because we’re a milk loving immature church. And holiness starts in the quiet places of our lives.

It starts with a quiet personal commitment, personal to becoming more like Jesus. And if we can’t do that, we’re going to look just like the world or worse since we claim to look like Christ. And I wrote this and put it out on social media and the usual suspects came out and said, “How dare you judge and blah, blah, blah.” You guys, we are actually called and commanded to righteous and wise judgment. The minute one of us calls ourselves to… we call ourselves a Christian, then we are then subject to and accountable to the Christians around us. This is the church we’re supposed to be holding each other accountable. Doesn’t mean that there isn’t forgiveness. It doesn’t mean that there can’t be a do over and a reboot and redemption, a redemption story can totally can come from this, but we better start talking about the huge problem we have in our churches right now with a lack of accountability and the sloppy agape that we’re getting away with. And just a lack of basically just an overall lack of integrity. 

In 1 Peter 1:15 the scriptures say you must be Holy because I am Holy. He didn’t say that it was a, this is a multiple choice. You can be or not be, A, B or C. he said you must be Holy. So like most authors, I spend quite a bit of time studying words, right? And language is a cornerstone in our culture. And in recent years we’ve seen the language changed dramatically. We’ve seen reckless attempts by social activist to redefine gender in an attempt to get rid of our societal male and female norms. We’ve seen a shift away from kindness and our everyday language, which has given way to divisive speech. And it threatens to tear us apart even in the church.

But I’ve grown more and more concerned about the state of God’s people, particularly as it relates to holiness. So I looked up the word, of course, and according to the dictionary, so Webster, right? Holiness is the state of being sinless. Purity of moral character, freedom from all forms of evil. Well eh, because the dictionary just described God. Okay. And I can’t relate to that definition at all. So thank goodness that’s not what the Bible means when it calls Christians to live a life of holiness. God isn’t looking for a state of being sinless. Because He that we can’t attain such a thing on this earth.

Rather, the Greek word that’s used for holiness is αγιότης and it simply means this: We are to be as set apart people. It means we are not to be like the world that we live in, rather where to be different. Like God is different. Truly, there’s no one else like God. Oh men and women, how we need to be set apart. And part of that being set apart means we hold each other to account. And as I am thinking about this and I’m preparing for the podcast today, I’m realizing again that the church in Western culture is at a crossroad and we’ve been here for a kind of long time, like sort of an old Ford pickup truck out in the middle of Missouri, right? It’s like we’re paused at a four way stop on a dirt road, scratching our heads, waiting for Waze to tell us which way to go.

Should we turn left? Should we turn right? Should we go straight? Doesn’t seem like we know what to do, but we should. God has been clear from the beginning as to what he expects of his people and he expects holiness. He expects us to be different. Our relationship should be different. What we watch on TV should be different. The music we listen to, the way we look at sin, it should all be a part of our desire to walk in obedience to God that produces that desire for holiness inside of us. There is no room in the Bible for God’s people to view sin lightly and yet we struggle to be set apart. So I hope today as you’re listening to this that you are striving toward holiness. Remember you guys, God doesn’t expect perfection, all right? He expects surrender. You should write that down.

He doesn’t expect perfection. He expects surrender and if you want to see your kids strive to live a life that would please God, then don’t do your best to blend in. We have a choice to make and I am praying that we would choose holiness. It’s all right for Christians to call out other Christians. When we see them sinning, particularly when we’re talking about public figures. And we’re not talking about a judgment in terms of judging a person’s soul. Only God can do that, but Jesus said that we would know a tree by its fruit and there are consequences to sin.

We need people in our lives that would hold us to account. I am surrounded by people that will hold me to account. My husband, the women that work on my staff at MomStrong international and at the Homeschool Resource Center in Vancouver. We have a great thing going. If we see one of us stumbling and starting to get into a pattern of especially of habitual sin, oh my goodness, you guys, we should be talking to each other. We should be calling each other out. Let’s not wait until we’ve so tarnished the reputation of Jesus and so wounded the people around us that it takes years to recover. Instead, let’s choose holiness. Let’s choose surrender.

And in that surrender we say, “Lord, have your way. Have your way.” Some of you guys are listening to this right now and the Holy spirit is telling you, “you got to surrender. You got to give that thing up. You got to give it up. You got to lay it down”. There is something beautiful about being able to lay it down and just say to the Lord, “Lord, I see that I’m doing this. I see that I’m sinning before you help me to be set apart. Help me to walk in a manner that’s pleasing of You, and that’s worthy of Your gospel.” And the Lord will do it. He really, really well. So let’s be Holy. I have said that I’m going to start answering some of your questions on Wednesdays as well.

Love your questions. You guys, keep them coming. You can shoot them to me at my website, Heidistjohn.com/mailboxmonday. And remember what I said, please put a one or two word sentence in there, one or two word description of what you’re writing about and then in as succinctly as possible, get your question out there and we would love to answer it here at the podcast.

So this one comes from a mom, her name is Sarah and she has a question about birth control and this was a really fascinating question. It came in quite awhile ago and I kind of tiptoed around it. I was like, I don’t know if I want to talk about that or not. There are certain things that I feel like we can talk about them but they don’t really help. Right? We can talk about it, but it’s not really edifying everybody. But something that she said to me sort of peaked my interest. So I’m going to go ahead and tackle this one and I hope it encourages. I’ll link back to some resources also to help you further study this issue. All right. She said, “Last night I was listening to a podcast in which you described certain things that are disputable and indisputable in the Christian walk, you mentioned birth control as something that is disputable. When I was a younger married woman, I use birth control in the form of the pill. I thought that it prevented conception from occurring at all, but only years later found out that it does not always prevent conception. It will prevent implantation on the wall of the uterus after conception has occurred. When I discovered that I was completely devastated and grieved deeply, perhaps your statement was only alluding to natural family planning or the use of condoms, but I feel strongly that people need to know how the pill really works. I thought perhaps you had a platform in which you could share this with other married women who maybe don’t know the truth about the pill. In my mind, the use of the pill or any similar form of birth control would be an indisputable sin in God’s eyes. I look forward to hearing back from you.”

So Sarah, I realized that you turned that question in quite some time ago and I’m going to probably bum some of you out today by saying that I also… So I had a very similar understanding of the pill. I was told that it would prevent pregnancy. And it turns out that it prevents, it does prevent implantation. And so there’s a couple of ways for us to look at this. First of all, Randy Alcorn, who I very much respect, runs eternal Perspective Ministries here in my neck of the woods out in Boring Oregon. And he has an awesome article that was written on February 17th of 2010 called Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortion? A Short Condensation. Let me, I’m going to read to you just a little bit. I’ll link to the full thing as well as his book in the show notes today.

“The pill is the popular term for more than 40 different commercially available oral contraceptives. In medicine, they are commonly referred to as BCPs or birth control pills or oral contraceptives. They’re also called combination pills because they contain a combination of estrogen and progestin. The pill is used by about 14 million American women each year. Across the globe, it is used by 60 million. The question of whether it causes abortions has a direct bearing on untold millions of Christians, many of them pro-life who use and recommend it. In 1991 while researching the original edition of my book, Pro-Life Answers for Pro Choice Arguments, I heard someone suggest that birth control pills can cause abortions. This was brand new to me in all my years as a pastor and a pro-lifer, I had never heard this before and I was immediately skeptical. My vested interests were strong in that Nancy and I had used the pill in the early years of our marriage as did many of our pro life friends and why not? We believed it simply prevented conception. We never suspected it had any potential for abortion. No one told us that this was even a possibility. I confess I never read the fine print of the pills package insert nor am I sure I would have understood it even if I had. In 14 years as a pastor. I did considerable premarital counseling and warned couples against the IUD because I’d read it could cause early abortions. I’d recommended young couples use the pill because of its relative ease and effectiveness. At the time I was researching Pro-Life Answers, I found only one person who could point me toward any documentation that connected the pill and abortion. She told me of just one primary source that supported this belief and I found only one other. Still these two sources were sufficient to compel me to include this warning in the book.” 

And here is his warning.

“Some forms of contraception, specifically the IUD, Norplant, and certain low dose oral contraceptives often do not prevent conception but prevent implantation of an already fertilized ovum. The result is an early abortion, the killing of an already conceived individual. Tragically, many women are not told this by their physicians and therefore do not make an informed choice about which contraceptive to use.” Randy goes on to say, “As it turns out, I made a critical error at the time. I incorrectly believe that low dose birth control pills were the exception and not the rule I thought most people who took the pill were in no danger of having abortions. And what I’ve found in more recent research is that since 1988 virtually all oral contraceptives used in America are low dose. That is, they contain much lower levels of estrogen than in earlier birth control pills.” 

And so he does a lot of research on this. He quotes Pharmacists for Life. He has a study that comes from the physician’s desk reference, which is excellent and I’ve read the whole article. It’s much too long to read to you. Also, his book Pro-Life Answers to Pro Choice Arguments is an excellent, excellent read. And so I’m going to let you guys chew on that a little bit. And then I want to kind of turn the conversation just really briefly to what God says about children. All right, so a lot of us have experienced unplanned pregnancies, right? I have. My fifth baby was an unplanned pregnancy and you guys are to like “What? Your number five, don’t you know how that works?” Yes, but we weren’t planning on having a baby and the Lord had other plans for us and so when we find out that we’re pregnant and it’s an unplanned pregnancy, what we need in any pregnancy is the perspective of God.

In Jeremiah 1:5 it says, “before I formed you in the womb, I knew you before you were born, I set you apart”. God is the author of life. Deuteronomy 32:39 says, “I bring to life”, and so even if you feel like you’ve made a mistake, your child is not a mistake. God is not surprised by the creation of new life. He is the creator. And those whom he creates, He loves, and we know because of Romans 8:39. That nothing can ever separate you or your baby from the love of God. In Genesis 29:31 we read that God opens and closes the womb, right? 1 Samuel 1:5 the Lord closed her womb. God ordains all pregnancies regardless of the circumstances. That’s why when we talk about cases of rape and incest, I always say it is not the baby’s fault.

We don’t… The baby should not get a death sentence because it was conceived in rape. In Isaiah 44:24 this is what the Lord says: Your Redeemer who formed you in the womb, I am the Lord who has made all things. And God never forms a life without having plans for that life. Jeremiah 29:11 for I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. You guys see that from God’s perspective, all pregnancies are from him and therefore are wanted by him. And so when we talk about babies, when we talk about a pregnancy planned, especially unplanned, the most important thing that we can do as God’s people is to always represent God’s point of view. We are ambassadors for the Lord. That’s what we do.

We represent the Lord’s point of view to the culture. And so I want to encourage you toward that today. This was kind of a heavy question, but I appreciated it being asked and I hope you guys are encouraged to look up what God’s Word says and to do your homework on the pill. My husband and I made the decision to go off the pill many years ago when we realized that it was preventing an already fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall. And we were so dismayed by that because no one told us. We were told that it prevented ovulation. So check it out you guys and then ask the Lord to give you wisdom and he will. So thank you guys for writing to me today. 

As usual, I love it if you’d leave reviews for the podcast, we’d love to hear from you. Love your Christmas cards. Love it if you join me at MomStrong International for the Bible study. And speaking of the Bible study today is when I do my teaching. So I’ll be going there for about an hour and teaching live at the members only Facebook group. So if you’re a part of MomStrong International’s Bible study, makes sure that you join us there. If you’re not on Facebook, we will record those videos and then put them out over the MomStrong International forums. All right. Stay faithful. Stay in the word and I’ll see you back here on Friday for part two of my interview with the Creation Guys. 

Write to Heidi:
Heidi St. John
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Support this ministry by donating through E-giving. You can also send donations to: 1100 NE34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

 

Prioritize and Thrive: Life Hacks for Busy Parents – 846

Becoming MomStrong, Homeschooling, MomStrong Parenting, MomStrong Sisterhood

Podcast (hsj): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:04 — 15.8MB)

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS

Help! I feel overwhelmed! How can I homeschool my kids and keep my sanity? Please tell me what to prioritize! Today, I’ll be answering this and several more questions. Listen in and be encouraged!

Transcribed version of podcast is below.

Today’s Scripture Writing Challenge Verse

  • Psalm 63:3-4

Resources Mentioned in Podcast

All Things Heidi

Join us at MomStrong International for our newest Bible Study and Scripture Writing!

Don’t Miss These!

TRANSCRIPTION:

This podcast is brought to you by our friends at Evangelical Christian Credit Union

Hey you guys, this is Heidi St. John. Welcome to the podcast. Today is Monday, November 18th. It’s mailbox Monday. This is episode number 846. Lots of stuff to talk about today. I’m going to get to your questions. 

Stick around. I think you’re going to be encouraged.

There have been a lot of things happening in the news lately that I have been commenting on, on social media and obviously around the dinner table, and we’re going to get to those things today. I’m going to talk a little bit about what’s happening with the impeachment hearings that are happening on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, regarding President Trump, answer some of your criticisms from social media and then also try to get to as many questions as I can for Mailbox Monday. If you want to have your question considered. Here’s a couple of things I want you guys to remember. You need to submit your questions to me. Don’t send them to me on social media, on Instagram or any of my social media outlets. Those are looked at by staff members and it’s hard for them to get those questions off of social media and into the form that we have set up for you.

If you want to reach out to me, please do it at heidistjohn.com/mailboxMonday. Please put all the information in there that you would like for me to have, but there’s a caveat. Can you please keep it short? Short and sweet and to the point and actually it’s really awesome if right before you start your question you can say what it’s about. Maybe it’s about homeschooling, maybe it’s about marriage, maybe it’s about politics, maybe it’s about the church, whatever it is. Maybe it’s about parenting. If you can put just one or two words in there before you start your question, that really helps me categorize things, so that I can get to a wide variety of questions here at the podcast.

I wanted to remind you guys that we’re starting our third week of the November study on contentment at MomStrong International. Come study the Word with me at momstronginternational.com. You can sign up for the study. You can get the free scripture writing challenge. The study itself is about $8 a month and I’m here to tell you right now, it’s going to bless and encourage you and it’s going to strengthen you in your knowledge of the Word and help you as you train your children in righteousness.

On December 6th, I will be speaking at a women’s Christmas tea in Newbury Park, California. If you’re anywhere around there, come on out. I just cannot wait to be with all of my Newbury Park women, so excited about that. December 6th for a women’s Christmas tea. Really, really excited about that. 

You guys, we have an awesome sponsor today. ECCU is sponsoring this podcast. Wouldn’t it be great if kids were born just knowing how to manage money? What a relief, right? Just hand them a little cash and they instinctively know what to do. Wrong. Not going to happen. I’ve been telling you guys for some time now about one of our partners here at the podcast and Evangelical Christian Credit Union has lots of tools at your disposal and wants to help your child become a great financial steward. I’ll tell you guys a little secret. They want you to be successful in teaching them, too. All right. Learn more about how they can help you on this journey at eccu.org/heidi.

All right. Without further ado, I’m going to jump into your questions. Lots of questions here at the podcast and I have been praying over these as they come in and really asking the Lord to give me wisdom as your questions come in and they’re wonderful questions. I love hearing from you guys and I hope you’ll keep them coming, so remember if you’ve got questions, Heidistjohn.com/mailboxMonday.

I’m going to be bringing guests on the show occasionally now on Wednesdays also, and I will be attempting to answer your questions on Mondays and Wednesdays and so I hope it’s an encouragement to you.

All right, this comes from Holly. She says, “Heidi, I am a new homeschool mom.” Welcome, Holly. “Just celebrated my one year anniversary, walking with the Lord. My husband travels for work and isn’t always available and I’m struggling to homeschool my six and four year old and giving them the time they need for school, trying to tend to my house, fit in my appointments, play dates, one on one time, trying to be a full in my own spiritual walk with the Lord and get it all done. So do you have any recommendations on how to do it all? What should be the priority?”

First of all, a sweet Holly, can I just say welcome? You have just described motherhood and I think that sometimes, I’ve noticed that you have a six and a four year old. Right off the top, I’m just going to say you probably shouldn’t be doing any more than an hour every day with your six year old. They don’t need a lot. All right? It’s the system that has told us, we’re so programmed and so conditioned to think that our kids need to be in school six hours a day and they really don’t. Especially not a six year old and certainly not a four year old. In fact, I am typically not doing school with my four year olds. This is a mistake I made long ago when my 28 year old was very little and I was so enthusiastic and thought, “Oh my goodness, she’s four years old. So let the schooling begin.”

Yeah. In hindsight, I wish I wouldn’t have done it that way. So your six year old, I’d say let your four year old play. These are the wonder years, right? Dump rice onto a cookie sheet and let them practice their shapes and their letters and numbers and you have them copy things into that cookie sheet. Set out a bucket of toys for your kids. My goodness, you guys, when you make cookies with them, you’re teaching them. When they’re helping you with the laundry and helping you do chores, kids like that need to know that they are a valuable and an important part of your home. And so you have an opportunity to do that.

As far as fitting everything in, you asked specifically what should be the priority. And so I’m going to outline those priorities for you from the word of God. Are you ready? The first one comes from Deuteronomy: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. We love the Lord. The Lord is our first priority. I’m going to say that again. Your relationship with the Lord is and should be, according to God’s Word, your first priority.

And so that means when you get up in the morning that we should be conditioning ourselves, before we open Facebook, oh for the love. Please, dear God, help Heidi St. John to stop doing that. It’s so tempting, isn’t it? Especially if the first thing we do is pick up our phones, right? That’s the first thing that I do. But I’m telling you what you guys, when I get lazy, when I fall into that, the enemy messes with me. And we need to remember that we’re on a battlefield every day. And for those of you who have little children, I have written about this extensively, and I’m going to quote from the book a lot today.

I wrote a book several years ago called The Busy Homeschool Mom’s Guide to Daylight, managing your days through the homeschool years. This is a great book for anybody, homeschooling or not, because it outlines the priorities that God gives us. Your first priority is your walk with the Lord and when your kids are little, bring them into it with you. If you’ve been up all night with a newborn, I’m not talking to you, all right? I’m talking to those of you guys who were sleeping through the night. Now I know, I know. I don’t know if mothers ever sleep through the night again, but you guys get it, right? You understand?

In the morning, bring your kids downstairs, read God’s Word to them, read out of a children’s Bible if your kids are little, let them see that this is the priority in your life. Your relationship with the Lord comes first. Out of an overflow then, of what God is doing in your walk with Him, you pour into your marriage. Marriage comes before motherhood. Write that down. Dads, marriage comes before fatherhood. Tend to your marriage and then out of an overflow of what God is doing in your marriage—you pour into your children, out of an overflow of what God’s doing in your children, you pour into your community. 

This is why so many people in ministry end up losing their families because we get it messed up. We start ministering to people when our own homes are not in order, and so this is the most important thing. And then ask the Lord, I mean, Holly, this is a great opportunity for you in the morning, when you’re having that time with the Lord. “Lord, how do you want me to order my day? How do you want me to do appointments and set up playdates and all those things?” And the Lord will show you. All right, Holly? Wonderful question. Thanks for writing.

Whitney. “In Alabama, we have an opportunity to homeschool our kids through Alabama Connections Academy. It is state regulated, they provide books and laptops for free. My question is, would this be a smart choice or is it best to consider something like Classical Connections that is more biblically based?” All right, now you know what I’m going to say, but I’m going say it anyway. Nothing is free. And so the school system, and I’ve been banging this drum for a really long time. Those of you who are homeschooling and you’re doing it through the state, can I just tell you right now, I believe in my heart that it actually hurts homeschool freedom when we do that.

I always encourage people, do it independent. Don’t take money from the government. Yes, they provide books and laptops. Why? Because they still want a window into influencing your kids. And so education is not neutral. It never has been, it never will be. And so I believe the smarter choice is always to give your kids a Christian education, a biblical education. And parents, you can do that without something like, I’ve never heard of Classical Connections, but without that you can do it on your own. I know lots of people who are using Ambleside Online. There are lots of online academies that are Christian based.

HSLDA— If you’ve got older children, they’ve got wonderful online courses that you can participate in. But I want to, I always steer parents toward giving their children a Christian education because education isn’t neutral. Luke 6:40. You guys know this verse. I say it all the time: When a student is fully trained, he will be like his teacher. And there’s never been a more important time than now to recognize that we’ve been duped in Western civilization into thinking that education’s just this benign thing and we send our kids to school and “bye, bye, have a good day, mama will see you later.”

We don’t realize that they’re being influenced and they’re often being influenced for evil. And that’s the straight up truth. And so I think, I love your question. It tells me that you’re considering the heart of your child, Whitney. And so I think that’s awesome. And I would steer you away from a state regulated, state run program, whether they provide free books and laptops or whether they don’t and say do something that is both independent and Christian in nature. That’s one of the reasons we love the homeschool resource center that my husband and I started here in Vancouver, Washington.

We don’t take money from the government. we don’t offer government things here. And we’ve kept the cost low, as low as we can, because most of the parents that are here are volunteering their time. You guys, if we would just link arms, think of what could happen. But instead we keep looking at the state, the state can help us, the state can give us books and laptops and all that stuff. So Whitney, I’m going to steer you away from that and towards something that’s biblically based. I love your question because it reveals your heart.

From Dana. She says, “Heidi, I love your podcast.” Thank you, Dana. “Thank you for being a voice of reason and truth. Last month at my school, I was told that drag queen story hour is potentially coming to my school for an afterschool event. That is infuriating.” Good grief! “With trembling voice, I raised my hand and asked how bringing in men dressed as sexualized women was relevant to our kids’ education. I was then told that we would have a vote on the issue and further discussion was to be had, so stay tuned. Well, fast forward to the next PAC meeting last night where I was told that drag queen story hour is now confirmed for next month. I feel so disregarded and brushed aside. Many of the people in the room, including the PAC president, have known me as long as 12 years. I’m an active member of my community and have served in many ways.”

“I love where I live and the families at our school, but this feels like a betrayal. I don’t know where to go from here. Of course, my husband and I will pray about it and are seeking the Lord’s will as we move forward or if we should, maybe this is the nail in the coffin and we should switch schools. We were there for a few years and we pulled our four kids to homeschool for two years and now this is the second year that we are back. What would you do? It seems like most people are for this event and it just breaks my heart.”

Okay, so Dana, I love your question again for the same reason as I love Whitney’s question, it really shows that you have a heart to do what is right for your child’s heart, for what your child is going to be taught and what they’re going to be surrounded with. And like I’ve said before, the reason it feels like a betrayal to you is because it is. The school system is not invested only in the academic pursuit of reading, writing, and arithmetic. There is a social engineering going on in our schools today that is beyond the pale.

It is beyond anything that I have ever seen in my lifetime. And for the 17 years that I’ve been speaking on homeschooling and speaking about education around the country for the first, you can ask anybody that listened to me for the first probably 10 years, or maybe even 12 years, I did not say “homeschooling is the best way.” I said “homeschooling is a great way.” I have changed my thinking on this over the years because I have seen such a blatant assault and a blatant disregard. When you say most people are for this, I’m here to tell you right now that the pressure that is being put on school administrators, the pressure that is being put on teachers, the pressure that is being put on lawmakers from the LBGTQ lobby for transgenderism specifically, for all other things, too, but transgenderism specifically is back breaking.

And most of the people that I am watching don’t have the moral fortitude or the courage to stand up under it and they kowtow to it. And that’s just the truth. And so if it were me, I would be switching schools. Since you asked. I’d be switching schools. I’d be taking my kids out of there so fast it’d make their head spin and I’d bring them home. The best thing that you can do for your kids is to be around your kids and influence them for the gospel, for as much time as the Lord gives you.

Because what is happening in the culture right now is a full on assault and we need to train our kids to be ready for it. I agree with you when you say that it breaks your heart. It breaks my heart, too. But more than that, it breaks the heart of God. And I think this is where Christian parents need to say no more. These kids do not belong to the schools. They don’t belong to school administrators or sexual activists. They belong to their parents. The parents have been given authority to train up their children and it’s never been more important than it is right now. Thanks for your question.

Next question comes from an anonymous listener. She says, “Dear Heidi, your podcasts always encourage me and I look forward to my 20 minutes with you while I get ready for the day. My question is not an easy one. I’m a homeschool mom of four and also a foster mom. I did not have a good education upbringing and felt very stupid growing up and was never told otherwise. My children started out in public school, but it didn’t take long to realize I needed to homeschool them for many reasons. I brought them home and did my best. Thankfully my first two and fourth are very much self motivated and learn easily. That is not the case with my third. He has continually gotten further and further behind, as I kept ignoring his obvious struggles because I simply did not know how to help him.”

“I kept thinking that it would just click, but it didn’t. He is now the age of an eighth grader and nowhere near where he should be academically. He has the heart of an angel and for that I’m grateful, but I am at a loss. We have always struggled financially and finally able to find a tutor. She made me feel horrible about myself and gave me very little hope for him. I’m afraid to go elsewhere for fear of being reported to the schools. I believe with all my heart that this is better than going to public school, but there is no support for this anywhere on the internet. And I feel as though I’m the only one in this situation and have become an absolute failure.”

All right, so anonymous. Can I just encourage you right now, God’s going to help you with this. You are not an absolute failure. I want to issue a request to everyone who’s listening to this. If you have a place where this woman can go to get help, can you send me that information at mailbox Monday? Heidistjohn.com/mailboxmonday. And I’m going to get your information to this sweet mom. And so I hear from parents all the time who say, “I don’t think I’m doing a good job.” And you guys, you know what? Can I just say right now, the jury’s not in on your son. The enemy wants you to feel like a failure and what I hear in your email to me is condemnation. That is Satan. The Lord never speaks to us in tones like that. This is not a sin issue. The Holy Spirit will speak to you in tones of conviction, not condemnation, and so walk in the conviction of the Holy spirit and ask the Lord to help you. And there’s enough people listening to this that I believe we can link arms with you and give you some sound advice and some good places to go. But your son is in eighth grade. You’ve got lots of time. All right? This is not the end. This is not the end. You are not a failure and the Lord of heaven’s armies will help you. So hang in there. Don’t be discouraged. 

I’ve got time for just a couple more.

Amber. “Heidi, I love your podcast. You’re a breath of fresh air in this cultural climate. Thank you, Amber. My husband and I feel convicted to start homeschooling in a year when our oldest turns five. However, I currently work full time outside our home. I have a very good corporate job with very good benefits. My income gives us the ability to tithe, have great health insurance. We could meet all the basic needs if I stayed home and homeschooled my girls, however, we would not be able to tithe or save much, even on a rice and beans budget. Do I choose to stay home knowing I cannot fully tithe 10% or save very much? Or continue to work full time and place my girls in a private Christian school as a second best choice? I would love to hear your honest opinion and sincerely Amber, a mama trying to obey the Lord and do right by her sweet family.”

Amber, I love this question. You are not alone. I get similar questions here all the time. And first of all, I’m going to tell you I’m not the Holy Spirit. Okay? The person that is most likely to speak to you about what’s best for you to do isn’t Heidi St. John. It’s the Holy Spirit and God will help you. He will give you what you need and he will encourage you. Can I just say, since you’ve asked for my opinion and that’s all this is, I think if you have the ability, I know moms who would absolutely kill to be able to say what you’re saying. You’re saying “if I stayed home and homeschooled my girls, we could meet all the basic needs.” You guys, everyone listening to me, that’s all we need. That’s all we need.

And I just don’t think that the Lord would say, “Oh no, if you can’t give a full 10%, I don’t want you to keep your kids home.” I can’t hear Him saying that. And so if you know that you can meet your basic needs, you guys, you will never get this time back with your kids, ever. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. And if God gives you the ability to come home, then come home. So much of the things that we think we need, we don’t need. And you guys, I spent a lot of time hardly having any money at all. In fact, most of the years that most of our seven kids were young, we struggled, struggled, struggled, to just provide for basic things and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

Also, I wanted to give you guys a couple of responses. I asked last week about those of you who work from home and I got lots of great responses, so thank you for that. I’m going to read one of them. This is from Heather. She said, “I’m writing in response to your podcast about working and homeschooling. I have been homeschooling my kids for four years and I’ve worked the whole time. My husband works until 4:30, so I found an evening job where I don’t have to go in until 6:00 PM or later. We still have dinner together as a family, so important, and after we eat, I head out to work. We live in a tiny town in Michigan, so I’m talking 500 people.” That’s a pretty small town. “And I found multiple jobs to work in the evenings. I even worked at McDonald’s for a bit, not ideal, but the hours were very flexible and honestly, I learned a lot about work from working there. I learned the value of treating food service workers with respect and this is a lesson I learned clearly. And I’ve told my children I want them all to work for at least some time, in fast food or waitressing in their teens, so they can learn these lessons firsthand. “Best part, my kids,” what does she say? “I also worked evenings at a local gas station.” This is a mom, you guys, who was willing to do anything to stay home with her kids and I so respect this. Finally, she said, “I was offered a custodial job cleaning a machine shop at night. I can go wherever I want, as long as I get my four hours per day, and the best part is my kids can come with me if I need them to. I was never willing to give up homeschooling and God always provided me with jobs that work around our homeschooling schedule. I did have to be willing to do jobs that are maybe less than desirable, but it makes money for my family and allows me to homeschool and so that I’m thankful where there is a will, there’s a way.”

Sarah wrote that she is able to work from home and she said “There are so many remote positions in our world today, I encourage moms to look there first.” She also goes on to say that they use an online school and it’s not the cheapest option she said, but it’s helped her feel like her kids are getting a solid education with her overseeing it and not having to do the prep time. There’s lots and lots of options for you guys and I just want to encourage you, I have written a book, I’m going to say it again. You can get it on Amazon, you can get it directly from me. I’ll link back to it in the show notes today, but it’s called The Busy Homeschool Mom’s Guide to Daylight.

There is a ton of great information in there about everything from meal prep, to laundry, to scheduling your day, to working. Lots of moms who gave input for that book work from home. And so I just wanted to throw that out there again. Heidi St. John, The Busy Homeschool Mom’s Guide to Daylight. I just want to encourage you because I’m getting lots and lots of questions for moms who are saying, “I feel like God is asking me to come home and I don’t know how to do it.” And you guys, I think that’s the Holy Spirit saying, “bring my kids home, bring them home. These kids belong to you and the Lord has given you responsibility for them.”

I love those questions. I’m out of time for today. I had some great other questions I want to get to, but I’ll get to them on Wednesday. And in the meantime, I just want to encourage you guys. Continue to be in the word of God. Join me over at Mom Strong International and sign up for the Bible study.

Don’t forget to send your Christmas cards to me, okay? As soon as you can, send your Christmas cards, we’d love to get a year end donation from you, as well. It helps us to keep the podcast on the air.

We love you guys and we’re praying for you. Stay faithful. The Lord is at work and he will not let you fall. He will be with you wherever you go. This is the Lord, you guys. He loves you.

All right, hang in there, everybody and I’ll see you back here on Wednesday.

Write to Heidi:
Heidi St. John
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Support this ministry by donating through E-giving. You can also send donations to: 1100 NE34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

 

“Faith on the Edge” with Pat Roy and Kyle Justice—PART ONE | 845

Current Events

Podcast (hsj): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:34 — 17.6MB)

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS

There’s a new wave of Christians converting to a belief in the flat earth, and it’s having a serious impact on our world. Are you equipped to give Biblical and scientific answers to questions that will inevitably come from family and friends?

Transcribed version of podcast is below.
Today’s Scripture Writing Challenge Verse

  • Romans 1:21-23

Resources Mentioned in Podcast

All Things Heidi

Join us at MomStrong International for our newest Bible Study and Scripture Writing!

Submit your questions to MailBox Monday.

Pat Roy served at the Institute for Creation Research for 12 years as the Director of Broadcast Media. It was during this time at ICR that he and his wife created the Jonathan Park audio dramas, a creation-based audio drama heard by millions around the world. They recently created a new audio drama called, Time Chroniclers. Pat has served as Director at Genesis Apologetics. He has traveled the nation speaking to hundreds of audiences, of all ages, about the importance of trusting God’s Word. 

Kyle Justice: Emmy nominated producer Kyle Justice began producing television projects as a teenager, which led him to work for and produce programming for major cable networks such as The Family Channel, ESPN, and National Geographic. In 1997 he partnered with Ken Ham at Answers in Genesis to produce the first creation kids show, “The X-Nilo Show”. This eventually led to him establishing Awesome Science Media, a prolific producer of creation science media used by homeschool families and aired throughout the world. Kyle is the homeschool dad of eight kids and married to Dawn since 1991.

Connect with Pat and Kyle: “Faith On The Edge” | The Creation Guys

Don’t Miss These!

TRANSCRIPTION:

Hey everybody. This is Heidi St. John. Welcome to the podcast. Today is Friday, November 15th. This is Meet My Friend Friday. It’s episode number 845. I’ve got a real treat for you guys here at the podcast today. Two of my favorite guys here at the Firmly Planted Family Homeschool Resource Center are here today, and we’re going to talk about a theory that some of you guys think actually isn’t gaining traction in the culture, but it is. That is the issue of flat Earth. 

Stick around. I think you’re going to be encouraged.

All right, so lots of things going on in the culture right now and we’re going to address some of them today, but before I jump into that one, I’ll let you guys know where I’m going to be next. Thanks for everybody who came out for the speaking season. I’m winding down to a close. I’ve got one more event before the end of the year. I will be at Godspeak Calvary Chapel on Friday, December the 6th for their women’s event there. Come on out and see me if you’re anywhere in the area. Kind of cool. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. These guys- I mean who doesn’t want to go to California in the winter time? Right? So that’s where I’ll be if you’re looking for me. And so you can check it out. More information at heidistjohn.com/events. After that, I’m going to take some time off for Christmas. You’re welcome. And then we come back and I will be keynoting the FPEA Family Cruise. So we’re going to be going to the Caribbean. So if you guys haven’t found out more information about that, you can find that out at heidistjohn.com/events. I’m pretty sure that the cruise for FPEA is sold out, but I’m told that there are a couple more rooms at a regular rate. So just let us know you’re coming, and we’ll put you in with a group. So we’ll find out more about that.

I’ll be at the DFW winter summit on the 24th of January and again on the 31st of January. So, busy season for me coming up. You can find out where I will be at heidistjohn.com/events. Thanks for listening to the podcast today. I’m excited you guys are here because I’m going to do something I haven’t done before, and that is talk about the issue of flat Earth.

My friends, Pat Roy and Kyle Justice are here in the studio with me today. Pat served at the Institute for Creation Research for 12 years as the director of broadcast media. And during his time at the ICR he and his wife created an audio series that you guys are going to be familiar with, Jonathon Park, which was a creation based audio drama heard by literally millions around the world, including my kids. Pat’s someone of a legend around here at Firmly Planted, and he recently created a new audio drama called Time Chroniclers. So we’ll link back to that in the show notes today. Pat has served as director at Genesis Apologetics and traveled the nation speaking to hundreds of audiences of all ages about the importance of trusting God’s word.

I let Kyle into the studio today on a whim. Kyle is an Emmy nominated producer. Kyle Justice began producing television projects as a teenager. Some of you guys have teens that are interested in producing and being coming producers. I am always telling you, “Dude, let them go for it,” because we want to fold our kids where they’re bent. I think Kyle’s a great example of that. This led him to work for and produce programming for major cable networks such as The Family Channel, ESPN, and National Geographic. In 1997, he partnered with my friend Ken Ham at Answers in Genesis, to produce the first creation kid show called The X-Nilo Show. I didn’t know you did that. I watched that. We’ll get back to you. This eventually led him to establishing Awesome Science Media, a prolific producer of creation science media, used by homeschool families and aired throughout the world. Kyle is a homeschool dad of eight kids and married to his beautiful wife Dawn since 1991. Guys, welcome to the podcast.

[Kyle] Wow.

[Pat] Yeah. Thanks for having us here.

[Kyle] Yeah, that was a great intro.

[Pat] No kidding, thank you.

[Heidi] It’s almost like you wrote it yourself.

[Pat] Almost.

[Heidi] Almost. You guys, I’m excited that you’re here. So lots of stuff going on with you. You guys are out there getting it done. You’re what I like to call here at the podcast, we call it #offthebench. Off the bench and onto the battlefield and you guys are kind of in the middle of what can only be described I think, as a cultural battle. So I’m going to intro it this way. So my audience is used to me talking about controversial subjects. I actually love controversy because I feel like speaking truth into controversy actually sheds light on it, rather than just saying there’s a controversy. I say, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about it from the position of the word of God, which you guys are doing. One of the things we started talking about here about four years ago was the topic of transgenderism.

I remember saying, “Oh, this will never… This is never going to take root in the culture. People are smarter than that”. No, they’re not. No, they’re not. And transgender is now of course, a force in the culture, largely because I think the church was silent and they thought like I did, “Oh, come on. Like no one’s going to believe this. Men can’t change into women, vice versa”. But I was wrong. And one of the… A similar topic is this issue of flat Earth. I heard about this right around four and a half years ago. I can’t remember where Jay and I were, but I met a woman at a homeschool conference. I was there with my friend Jay Wile, and he had a booth sort of behind me. You guys know Jay, sort of the… He is a physicist, right?

He’s a rocket scientist. I’m always like, what are you a rocket sci- oh nevermind. Yes you are. And this woman came up to me and I’m talking to her about what I’m passionate about, which is faith and culture. And she said, “what do you think about flat Earth?” And I started laughing and I was like, “Oh.” She wasn’t laughing, and I said, “Wait a minute, like you’re asking me for real?” And she said, “Yeah.” She said, “I really want to know.” And she began talking about her husband and basically it sounded almost cultish to me the way she was describing it. So I did my friend Jay Wile a favor, and I was like, hang on, I got someone you need to meet. So I took her, because I can’t answer this woman’s questions. I haven’t studied this thing.

All I wanted to say was, have you ever been in an airplane? Which I said to her, and she had this weird answer for me being in an airplane and how that did not- the curvature that I saw wasn’t actually right. And I thought, I can’t do this. So I took her over to Jay Wile and I said, Jay, I want you to meet my new friend and blah, blah, blah. I said, I can’t remember, let’s say her name is Mandy, for the sake of the discussion. I said, “Mandy”, I literally said this- in hindsight, maybe it wasn’t the right call, but I said, “Mandy, tell Dr. Wile what he’s won.”

And she kind of looked at me like, “what do you mean?” I said, “I’m so sorry. Tell him what you just told me”. And so she started saying, “Well, Heidi and I were just discussing the issue of flat Earth.” And Jay looked at me like, “are you for real right now?” And I was like, “Oh look at the time, I got to go.” And I left her there, right, to which this day, every time he sees me now out on the road, he’s just like, dude, you still owe me dinner. And he’s right.

But you guys deal with this issue all the time. And I guess the first one, the first thing I want to ask you, cause I know that my audience is like, “What? Is this really a thing? Is this really an issue?”

[Kyle] Well, I first started hearing about it through Dr. Danny Faulkner who works for Answers in Genesis, and he kept doing these posts on flat Earth. And I’m like, he’s joking. I think. April 1st came out last year or the year before, and he was all over it, and I’m like, is this for real or not? So, I called him up and he goes, yeah, it’s for real. And he’s even working on a book on it and selling. I’m like, I’m doing all these documentaries, and Pat and I had been working together on some other projects. It’s like, “Pat, maybe we should do a documentary on this.”

[Pat] Right. And at first it sounded like a really interesting topic, but the further we’ve gotten into this, the deeper the rabbit hole goes.

[Heidi] It’s terrifying.

[Pat] It really is and Heidi, I’ve become convinced that this is another distraction that is calling Christian men away from being fathers and being husbands and getting out the gospel. Because we have gotten emails from wives who say, I am desperate. My husband has pulled us out of church. We no longer read the scriptures except for to prove that the Earth is flat. He no longer interfaces with the children and he no longer talks to people about Christ, but now he’s a missionary of flat Earth. We’ve also heard of a church that has split over this issue and so we have gotten all kinds of messages from all kinds of people.

Heidi actually, I think about it this way. If I was say, trying to distract men from doing what they’re really called to, I would come up with an issue that doesn’t really matter and make it seem like it’s the most important thing on Earth. And that’s what we found, what the flat Earth movement is those that are convinced that the Earth is flat. They believe that it is the most important thing and that is how they spend all of their time— is trying to convince others that the Earth is flat.

[Heidi] Isn’t that amazing? It seems to me that we are very, I mean this was from Genesis. We are a very easily deceived people, right? I mean you can hear Satan whispering in Eve’s ear, :you won’t surely die, it’s not that. God didn’t mean it. Did God really say:- and God really did say. So, when you guys see how this is affecting Christian families and you see how it’s affecting the world around you, your response has been to say, “Oh no, we’re going to show you, let’s actually take this up from a scientific standpoint,” which is largely what Answers in Genesis been doing all this time saying, listen, the Bible can actually stand up to your criticism. Let’s have the conversation and you guys have found a really unique way to do that. How did you come up with this idea, and sort of where is it taking you?

[Kyle] Well, it’s interesting because it seems like there’s two camps in the flat Earth movement. There’s the secular flat Earth movement, and then there’s the biblical, flat Earth movement. I mean, Heidi you said, “Hey, let’s show them the scriptures, it would make sense,” but there’s a whole camp of Christians that are using the scriptures to prove that the Earth is flat.

[Heidi] That’s the lady at my booth, she was quoting scriptures to me and I was like, okay, I don’t even know what to do with you now.

[Kyle] And I mean all over history you have different groups that are quoting scriptures to prove their little points and so on. And so what we have really had to do when we looked at the documentary and what did we have to present in it was, gee, I think we have to go after, not just the scientific side first, but the biblical whole model of what verses are they using? And then did they really work?

[Heidi] So we’re talking about this to a lot of people who have never heard of flat- they’re like, uh-uh, it’s kind of a big deal though. Like if you were to get on the Internet and start searching the flat Earth theories- and I saw a guy in the airport, before the show aired, I was telling you guys, I used to think, Oh, this will never catch on. Just like the lie of transgenders, and which it really is a lie, right? That we’ve just believed. And I saw a guy in the airport not too long ago and he had- yes, the Earth is flat. Asked me why, and I was like, I’m not touching that with a ten foot pole.

Then I think what you guys are doing is so cool because what you’re saying is, we need to engage. As Christians, we need to understand the argument, right? And be able to engage and the Bible says that we’re supposed to be able to give an answer for the hope that lies within us. And what you’re doing is you’re equipping Christians to engage in this discussion with an answer. And so, where do we start? You’re saying it’s relevant. Pat why do you say it’s relevant? Why should people care about this issue?

[Pat] Well, Heidi I think that there are more people converting to the idea of the flat Earth than any other time in history. I think it’s really affecting churches. I think most churches, from what I’ve seen, most of them have never even heard of this, right? People just disappear from their congregations and they don’t know why. Or, the other response is, well, that’s ridiculous. That’ll never catch on.

[Heidi] That was me. Are you making fun of me right now, Pat? You making fun of me on my own podcast?

[Pat] There you go.

[Heidi] Back it up there, brother.

[Kyle] Never, never.

[Pat] So I think those are the ways. And so, either they’re ignoring it or they think it’s ridiculous. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people are converting to this idea that the Earth is flat, and I just think it’s a dangerous idea. I think it’s having a huge impact on families and churches and nobody even really realizes it’s an issue.

[Heidi] Well, why should we care? I mean, you’re saying it’s a dangerous idea. And I’m like, who cares? So they think the Earth is flat, why do I care?.

[Pat] Well, again, I think the shape of the Earth really doesn’t matter, right? It really doesn’t matter. But what does matter is the fruits that we see from it. And again, we’re getting emails from wives whose husbands have completely pulled them out of church. We’ve gotten emails from churches that have said that they have split. We’re just seeing negative fruits from all of this. And my goodness, Heidi, once you get involved in the flat Earth, it seems like it consumes these people, and then all of a sudden they’re not out sharing the gospel anymore.

[Kyle] And not just in the U.S., too. I’ve heard Latin America, it’s spreading like wildfire there, too. So you know, it’s going around the world.

[Pat] Around the world.

[Heidi] What look what just happened! There are flat Earthers all around the globe.

[Pat] We actually, in our documentary went out on the streets. And I’ve got a clip with me where we actually went out onto the streets and talk to people about what they thought about the flat Earth.

[Heidi] So this is your documentary, your new one, Faith on the Edge, right? And this is a sampling of you guys talking to ordinary people about what they think. Let’s hear it.

CLIP:

[Pat] Okay. So Kyle, we’ve heard that this idea is really popular, but I would like to hear what people are actually thinking.

[Kyle] Let’s take it to the street.

[Pat] Many people these days are starting to believe that the Earth is flat. What do you think about that?

Person 1: That’s still a thing?

Person 2: It’s round, just keeps going around and around and around, man.

Person 3: It looks pretty flat to me, but I think it’s round. Saturn’s round, Jupiter round. Everything else is round.

Person 4: I was actually reading something the other day that said, the Earth is in a donut shape.

[Pat] And the moon is a coffee, right?

Person 4: You never know, it could be flat.

Person 5: I think that it’s whatever they tell us.

[Kyle] Okay, whatever they tell us so… But there’s some people that say round, some that say flat. What do you think?

Person 5: I think unless we actually go out there and explore it for ourselves, there’s no way that we can actually know what it is.

Person 6: No, I don’t think the Earth is flat.

[Pat] You think it’s round?

Person 6: Yeah, I guess- yeah, you’re right. I guess it’s round.

[Pat] Really? I just convinced you just like that?

Person 7: There’s a lot of compelling evidence that, the possibility that the Earth is flat. While in other cases the Earth is actually around, and the Bible doesn’t really talk about the Earth being round.

[Pat] What shape do you think the Earth is?

Person 8: Triangle? I feel like that’d be a tough sell.

[Pat] You think it’d be a- I bet it’s not as tough as you would think it would be.

Person 9: I don’t know. I think the Earth is definitely round. For people that believe the Earth is flat, maybe that’s true.

[Kyle] It wouldn’t be the two different shapes at the same time though. Is that what you’re saying?

Person 9: I don’t know. I mean our personal beliefs create our realities I guess, so I think it can kind of be both at the same time.

[Kyle] So do you know anybody who does believe in the flat Earth?

Person 9: Yes. One of my good friends is a flat Earther, yes.

Person 10: No, I don’t have any friends.

Person 11: Tons of boys at my school.

Person 12: Yeah, definitely.

Person 13: There’s people who say they do. I think it’s definitely a cultural trend.

Person 14: Kind of caught me by surprise when I found out, but yeah.

[Kyle] Why did they become so passionate about it, it almost seems like they become evangelists of the Flat Earth.

Person 15: It’s like it’s an anti kind of movement.

Person 16: A lot of people now are just starting to identify in an idea or a party versus themselves.

Person 17: Those people need to find hobbies.

[Kyle] Maybe that is their hobby. Just using your own observations, why do you think the Earth is round?

Person 18: Well, I can… Got me right there.

Person 19: Why the Earth is round… It’s very hard to explain that. I don’t…

Person 18: My own senses. Nothing I’ve been told.

Person 20: I would say just from the pull of gravity and then also you look at the day night cycle to the rest of the world.

Person 24: Until they show evidence, that’s when I will actually start looking into it.

Person 21: But he’s saying the same thing about people who believe that the Earth is round. We’ve been given these facts.

Person 22: To say that the Earth is flat is basically rejecting all of the scientific evidence that we’ve compiled.

[Kyle] Why do you think that young, younger people are the ones that are having a harder time accepting these things?

Person 23: Where do you look next for young people to be upset? Kind of overthrow the man, overthrow the machine, is going to be at the government. And I think that’s where a lot of these tensions and these questions kind of raise from.

[Kyle] Well, Pat that was really fascinating to learn what everyday people are thinking about the flat Earth.

[Pat] It was interesting that some of them were actually questioning the shape of the Earth. And then almost all of them had friends or family that believed that the Earth was flat. And then it was also interesting that they couldn’t defend their own observable facts on why the Earth is round.

[Kyle] That’s fascinating. My favorite guy was the guy who said “whatever your truth is, that’s what the Earth is shaped.”

[Pat] That was really interesting to me.

END CLIP

[Heidi] All right, so you’ve got a pretty good smattering of people there with kind of differing ideas and differing opinions. I thought it was really interesting that when you say, well, why do you say that the Earth is round? Some we’re like— “uhhh”. I mean if somebody asked me why the Earth is round, I’ll just be like, cause I saw a picture of it.

[Pat] But those were all faked by NASA.

[Heidi] I heard that.

[Kyle] Now, Heidi what’s interesting is when I go out to speak now on general creation topics, not even talking about the flat Earth, but just talk about scientific evidence for creation. I now will ask the audience, how many of you either believe the Earth is flat, or know somebody personally that does believe that the Earth is flat? And about a third of the hands go up, nowadays.

[Heidi] That’s crazy town. I mean it seems crazy to me. I was thinking about this as I’m listening to these people, I’m all for being open minded, right. That’s a big thing. Tolerance, open-minded. It’s like we’ve gotten so open-minded that our brains have fallen out. And I was thinking that really what’s happening0 and this is kind of where I’d like to sort of segue this conversation a little bit.

And I heard you talking about these women are writing you, and they’re saying their husbands are leaving their families, they’re pulling their kids out of church. They’re basically worshiping at the idol— of the altar of flat Earth right now. And it seems like a distraction. But I wrote in my notes it seems to me that evangelism for anything else is really idolatry. We can do this in the homeschool movement, right? I mean I can sit here, Pat, you and I have had this discussion, over the last couple of years for sure. People that we have seen that worshiped homeschooling. And homeschooling is the answer and homeschooling this, and homeschooling that. If we’re not turning people back toward Jesus, then it doesn’t really matter what we’re saying. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if the Earth is round or the Earth is flat. These guys, if they don’t have the gospel, they’re going to Hell. And that’s the bottom line.

[Pat] Well, I would say for the Christian flat Earth movement, I think most of them are actually Christians who have trusted Christ the savior. I just feel like they’re distracted. And so I want to say very clearly, I don’t think the flat Earth is a salvation issue. But what I do think is it’s a distraction issue. I think it’s taking people away from the gospel, from their wives, from their children, from their families, from their churches. That’s what I think is happening.

[Kyle] You think about Pilgrim’s Progress and how, Christians, that these different groups would get distracted in these towns and stuff, and not go the path that God has for them.

[Heidi] He’s on his way to the Celestial City but he forgot. He forgot!

[Kyle] And I’ve compared the flat Earth to that type of thing. Where these men, and training their families onto the next generation to serve and love the Lord. It’s not happening now because of the flat Earth.

[Heidi] And when you guys meet people who like me, I’m going to kind of swing it back around to this because I always feel like whenever I address topics like this with an audience that’s feeling already overwhelmed, right? There’s so many problems like Heidi, do you have to talk about one more thing? Next week I’m just going to have somebody come on and we’re going to talk about how to bake gingerbread cookies, all right? That’ll be the next thing we do because we don’t have to argue about it, or wonder if the gingerbread is actually real or if it’s flat or not. You can add more baking powder and it’ll be a little rounder or…

[Kyle] You believe gingerbread is flat?

[Heidi] But so here’s my thing. How can we encourage, cause we’re going to run out of time for today’s show. I’m going to bring you guys back because I want to talk about the scientific problems with the flat Earth theory. I want our listeners to really hear the science behind it, but I’d like to leave them today with an understanding of why this matters to them and is there a reason for them to engage in the conversation, to where if they encounter somebody that believes this, they will have an answer because it rather than just say, here’s another big problem for you guys, I want to give them kind of hope. Really that’s what you’re doing. That’s what your new documentary Faith on the Edge is about. You guys have been out there, you’re doing the research for us. Thank you very much. Doing the research for us, so that we can get a better of the issue at hand. Right? Was that the motivation behind the documentary?

[Kyle] Well, we began talking about this right at the beginning, because we realized that usually flat Earthers are so committed that you don’t often see them come back out of believing in the flat Earth again. So we said, well, what is the purpose of our documentary? Is it to try and turn flat Earthers back into round Earthers? Well, no, not really. I think more what our calling has been with this is to try and educate people. So if they are a wife, or children or whatever, they understand the issues. But I think most importantly of all, it’s to stop people from going to the flat Earth in the first place. We feel like if we can give them the evidence ahead of time, that when they’re confronted with it, that they already understand what the issues are, and already understand why the flat Earth is not a valid position.

[Pat] I think so many of the— what how many verses? Like 200 references to the flat Earth, the flat Earthers.

[Kyle] Right and hopefully in our next episode we can talk about those because that’s really the commitment of a lot of flat Earthers is they believe that the biblical positions says that the Earth is flat. And so I think we need to kind of address that a little bit and show why that…

[Pat] And the thing is we wanted to help other Christians who run into this, these verses that are being used. Really what the context of the passage is. So they’re not sitting there going, “Oh wow, it does say that.”

[Heidi] Right, so they’re not confused.

[Pat] And then they begin to question. So, we’re doing some apologetics at the same time. And that was a big goal, especially the first half of the documentary.

[Heidi] And the Christian Church really doesn’t see this as an issue right now. I mean I don’t hear churches talking about this. I don’t feel like I kind of feel like it’s going to slap them upside the head. Frankly, like the transgenderism issue. And when I wrote Becoming MomStrong two years ago, a lot of what I was saying, the premise behind that was, this generation of parents is dealing with questions that previous generations didn’t even see coming. And so part of the reason why I want to have you guys on the show is to say, get ready cause this question is coming. You are going to get asked it. Somebody at some point is going to say, “Hey, I believe blah, blah, blah,” which really a lie from the enemy, right? And it is I think a source of distraction, but also it takes away from the creator. And, and we do this. I mean this is the enemy, right? Over time, just distracting us with different things. And so in that regard, it really does matter.

One more thing before I wrap the show up for today. When someone says to you, let’s say just a mom or a dad is listening. I know there’s a lot of men listening to this today, and they’re like, “what? This isn’t really a thing.” Why should they care about this issue? Why should it matter to the average person who’s like, “I don’t know if I’m ever going to even be and why should I care one way or the other?”

[Pat] Well, I think you’re definitely, if you haven’t already, you’re going to encounter somebody who believes in the flat Earth. It has become so common now. Everybody is going to run into somebody who believes it.

[Kyle] And their kids, a lot of their kids are running into this. And we’re hearing about kids asking their parents, “Hey, what about this? So, how do I interpret what they’re saying?” And the parents often don’t have the answers. And so we want to prepare parents to be able, when their kids have questions, they’ll be able to say, “oh yeah, here’s the context and here’s the science of behind it”. So we’re providing tools for parents to be able to talk to the kids about this.

[Heidi] And so really what you’re helping parents do is to get ahead of it, to get out ahead of it. And I love that. I’m going to read from the back of your new DVD that just cause- is it out available for people right now?

[Kyle] Came out last March.

[Heidi] Fantastic. So it says on the back, it says there’s a new wave of Christians converting to a belief in the flat Earth and it’s having a serious impact on our world. Are you equipped to give biblical and scientific answers to questions that will inevitably come from family and friends? And you guys have some really great guests on this with you. Dr. Charlie Duke. You said he was Capcom for Apollo 11 and an astronaut for Apollo 16, he’s on here?

[Pat] Yes.

[Kyle] Yes.

[Heidi] Wow. What was that like?

[Kyle] You were on the moon, what do you think, round or flat? You’re going to be surprised by the answer.

[Pat] He was great. I interviewed him. He was awesome.

[Heidi] Oh, that’s fantastic. So you got a really great a range of guests on here speaking to this issue. It’s a fascinating topic and I’d love it, would you guys come back next Friday and we can finish this conversation?

[Pat] We’d love to.

[Kyle] We’d love to do that.

[Heidi] All right. We’ll plan it. We’re going to come back next Friday. This is too much for one show and so I’d like these guys to come back next Friday. My friends Pat Roy and Kyle Justice here, talking about the flat Earth and why it should matter to you. And what is the answer that you can give. Thanks for listening everybody. Stay faithful and I’ll see you back here on Monday.

Write to Heidi:
Heidi St. John
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

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Off the Bench: How to Be a Victor, not a Victim | 844

Becoming MomStrong, MomStrong Parenting

Podcast (hsj): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:34 — 17.6MB)

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Have you ever lost momentum? I have. One minute, I’m cruising along, just killing it at this motherhood gig… dinner’s in the slow cooker, homeschooling is all caught up… laundry’s done. Okay—that was pushing it. Laundry is never done. Am I right? We all need encouragement. Listen in and let’s be encouraged together. If God is for us, who can be against us?

Transcribed version of podcast is below.

Today’s Scripture Writing Challenge Verse

  • Romans 1:16-17

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TRANSCRIPTION:

This podcast is brought to you by MomStrong International.

Hey everybody, this is Heidi St. John. Welcome to the podcast. Today is Wednesday, November 13th. This is episode number 844. We are already halfway through the month of November. Oh my goodness. We’ve got a lot of things to get to you today. I want to talk a little bit about what it means to not be a victim, but rather to find victory. 

Stick around. I think you’re going to be encouraged.

Thanks for tuning in everybody today. I really appreciate you listening. I think I’ve got the best podcast listeners in the whole wide world. I so love hearing from you and in fact your responses to Mailbox Monday have been so overwhelming and as the questions come in, I’m realizing I’m just getting farther and farther behind and as we prayed about it and kind of sought the Lord on it and talked about it as a staff, we’ve decided to go ahead and invest time on Wednesday also to answer your questions. And so I’m going to get to some of your questions today and then do a little bit of a devotional with you and kind of talk about what’s happening in the news.

And so today’s going to sort of be my off the bench day. Normally on Wednesdays I teach from the MomStrong International Bible study and we have gone ahead and moved that teaching over to the members only group. If you want that teaching, which I do live on Facebook, let us know if you’ve already purchased the Bible study. We actually, we should have already sent you an invitation, but I’ll be giving you snippets from the Bible study. But the full teaching is going to happen over there. That way I can interact with you and kind of take your questions and really put my finger on the pulse of what God is doing in your life so that we can be sure to minister to you more effectively. That’s kind of one of the changes that we’re making.

If you’re not part of the MomStrong International community, I just want to encourage you to do that. This is a fantastic way and a wonderful place for you to grow in your knowledge of the Word of God. And it will help you as you begin to get out of your churches and into the culture. We need to get away from the pews and into reaching the people. And I think we have, for so long, we’ve taken a sideline in the culture and it’s my heart to see you guys get off the bench and onto the battlefield. And so that’s why I’m going to be taking more of your questions and just encouraging you towards walking in a place of victory. And I hear so often from moms who feel less than victorious. We often feel like we are victims and that is not God’s heart for us, really. That’s the enemy. He wants us to feel that way.

And so I guess my question today as we sort of jump into this next 20 minutes is to ask you if anything is holding you back? In Galatians 5: 7-9, the Apostle Paul said, “You were running the race so well. Who was held you back from following the truth? It certainly isn’t God for He is the one who called you to freedom.” So many great nuggets in that small passage. Galatians 5: 7- 9.

But I want to just ask you if you’ve ever lost momentum. Have you ever lost momentum? I have. A one minute I’m cruising along, just killing it. The motherhood gig and I’m feeling really brave and I’m like, Lord, I’m operating in your Holy Spirit. I’m getting off the bench and onto the battlefield. Dinner’s in the slow cooker. My homeschooling is all caught up. My laundry was done. Okay, never mind, that’s just pushing it. My laundry is never done. But just about the time I’m ready to collect my motherhood medal, something happens and I’m a mess. Lying in a fetal position behind my closet door with a bag of double stuffed Oreos.

Please tell me that you guys understand this. All the emojis in the world can come at us at any given time because life requires all of them. Sometimes in a single day when I fall off the mommy wagon, it’s easy for me to look around and an effort to cast the blame somewhere. But honestly, most of the time, even the discipline issues I’m struggling with with my kids can be traced back to wait for it, my own disobedience. I think the same thing is true in our unwillingness to engage the culture around us, to step out from the four walls of our churches and actually be the salt and light the Jesus calls us to be.

We just had an election here in the Pacific Northwest, actually nationwide there were elections and the voter turnout, I want to say it was 12%. What in the world? We wonder why we’ve got so many rotten people in leadership. And I think it’s because we’ve just, we give up, we feel discouraged and distracted and the enemy has used it. And sometimes when I’m struggling, it’s just my own disobedience. It’s the Lord telling me to do something, whether it’s, “Hey, Heidi, discipline your kid,” or, “Hey Heidi, go to bed earlier.” Or, “Hey Heidi, you wake up in the morning and get into My Word.” And I don’t do it because I’m tired, because I feel discouraged. Whatever it is.

And when you guys realize this is happening, can I just encourage you to step back and hit the reset button? And if you’re there now, then this, then lean in because this is for you. If you’re there, take a deep breath because guess what? God understands. He understands. And even when the momentum that you’ve lost has resulted in a departure from God’s truth, maybe you’ve lost momentum and you’re believing the lies in the culture right now. Maybe you’re believing the lie that it doesn’t really matter because it doesn’t affect you. If it breaks God’s heart, men and women, it should break our heart.

And I love Paul’s honest emotion in Galatians 5 because you can almost hear the tone of a parent in his voice. He’s looking at his kids. You guys what happened? You were running the race so well. And then as if he knows the inner struggle that we all face, he jumps right back in and says, “Hey, this is not God’s fault. God has more for you.” You see, the world wants to drown out the truth of scripture, but hear me loud and clear. Men and women, loved children of the living God, we have got to cling tightly to the truth of God’s word. God’s word, it brings freedom. God’s ways bring freedom. Freedom from worry. Freedom to rest when we need it. Freedom from the fear of failure. Freedom to cling tightly to the truth. Cling to it. For in the truth, we find life. We find life and Jesus understands the weariness of the race. I’m going to be answering your questions in just a minute here, but I want you to understand that these things that we’re going to be talking about today, they’re not taking the Lord by surprise.

He understands the weariness of the race and through the Apostle Paul, He gently is saying, “Hey you guys, I love you.” Can you hear his voice? Can you hear Him above the noise of your busy household and the demands of motherhood and the news of the day and all the stuff that’s happening in schools and in our libraries? Lean in because Jesus is here. He’s here and He will help you and encourage you to get back on the path that He has set before you. His word is a lamp to our feet and a life and a light to our path. Don’t be a victim when God has victory for you. Stay in His word and you’ll stay on the path. Keep running the race. God is for you. God is for you.

I’m in the middle right now of writing a 365 day devotional and as I write it, it’s taking a lot of self control because there are days when I’ll just be honest, there are days when I’m just like, I don’t actually have anything to say. I’m tired. Laundry is not done. Sometimes I’m discouraged because we suffered a major defeat. Planned Parenthood, by the way, is the enemy of every Christian that’s listening to this. They are your sworn enemy and we have come face to face with that darkness recently. And every once in a while I just, I feel like, why am I even trying? I really did feel this way last week. I’m like, why am I even trying? I’m telling all these people to get off the bench and onto the battlefield. And I feel like in so many ways, the battle is lost and there is no hope.

But that is not the Lord. That is not His heart. This is not his heart when I’m parenting and I’m tired of parenting, I can almost hear the Lord saying, “You’re running the race so well. What’s held you back? You’re not a victim. You’re my child.” And so I want to just encourage you to lean in and hear from the Lord. And hear from the Lord.

Speaking of leaning in and hearing from the Lord, I’m going to answer your questions, but I want to remind you guys, I’m super excited to start getting your Christmas cards. I’m already getting them. I know that I keep saying this, but I want to see Christmas cards this year. I will cry if I don’t see Christmas cards this year. Send us your Christmas cards for my Christmas card Palooza. I also want to encourage you that it would encourage us if you would join us over at MomStrong International. We’ve got awesome stuff in the Heidi St. John shop right now. The Speak Life necklace is back in stock and they go really quickly and so they make a wonderful Christmas gift.

I think we’ve got 25 in stock right now, so the first 25 of you to get that necklace. It’s a great Christmas gift made in Israel. Beautifully handcrafted. My off the bench cheese t-shirts. We’ve got some awesome Heidi St. John shirts that will also send a message. And if you’re anywhere in the Portland, Vancouver area, come by the homeschool resource center and see what God is doing. We’ve got Anne of Green Gables, there’s a play going on, a dessert theater, lots of stuff happening here. We are training these children to walk with and love the Lord Jesus and that’s what God calls all of us to do. Whether we’re at a homeschool resource center or not. God calls us to walk in right relationship with Him and to pass that truth on to other people. I’m going to read your questions today, But if you guys are discouraged, don’t be discouraged because the Lord of Heaven’s armies is at your side and He loves you and He has so much more for you than you even can possibly imagine.

This comes from Erin. Hi Erin. She says, “Hi Heidi. I’m a new follower. I was just introduced to you by the moms at our church who are doing your MomStrong Bible study.” I am so excited about that. Thank you so much. If you guys have not found the MomStrong Bible study, you can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, anywhere that books are sold and please leave reviews. Please do that. I would appreciate it. All right. She says, “My six year old daughter has been having an issue with Heaven and death. She doesn’t want to go because she doesn’t want to come back to our home. When she brings it up, I grasp at what to say to her, but I end up shutting the conversation because she gets so much anxiety over it. How do I approach this subject with her? Any talking points or Bible verses to read? Any help would be appreciated. I don’t want her to fear Heaven or going to see Jesus.”

First of all, this is one of the most common fears that children have is a fear of death. And actually I think it’s fair to say that adults have a fear of death and we read about death all throughout the scriptures. Our family has faced death many times. We lost my father-in-law a few years back and we obviously came very close to losing Bobby and death is difficult. But the Bible teaches us that death comes to all of us. Death is a part of our fallen world and the Bible does not shy away from this truth. Psalm 139 tells us that God has numbered our days. And actually you guys, knowing that God has numbered our days takes the fear out of, should I do that?

If your days are already numbered for you, the Lord knows when you’re going home, so get out onto the battlefield. He’s already ordained the days of your life for you and the Bible teaches us there’s a judgment coming. I want my kids to know that. I want them to know that there is a payday someday for the way that we’ve lived on earth. That’s 2 Corinthians 5:10. I also want my kids to know that death is not the way it’s supposed to be. This is not how when God made the world and put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, an intruder came. Satan, and he tempted Eve and Adam and Eve sinned and Adam’s sin opened the door through which the curse of death entered the world. It’s important for your kids to understand where it came from and explain to your kids that this is why we’re sad when someone dies. When in our morning and through our tears, what we’re really saying is there’s no such thing as death from natural causes.

We weren’t born to die. We die because of sin. We die because sin entered the world and there’s hope and your kids need to know that there’s hope. The Bible teaches us that one day death is going to be done away with. In 1 Corinthians 15: 26 it says, “The last enemy to be destroyed will be death.” And I’m telling you what, I’m looking forward to that. One day the Lord’s going to come back and He’s going to make the wrongs that have been done in this world, right again. And this is an opportunity for you to introduce your kids to Christ and to say the Lord’s already defeated death and when we die, the Bible says that those of us who know the Lord Jesus are going to go home to be with Him. That’s joy. The Apostle Paul said in Philippians 1:21 that, “To live for me is Christ and to die is gain.”

And our culture is doing everything it can to run away from this idea of getting old and dying. And I remember, and I know you guys will too, I remember while not all of you, but a lot of you will remember Phil Donahue back in the 80s do you guys remember the show? And he had these guys on there that were saying that they had figured out a way to cheat death. That they had discovered a way that they didn’t have to die anymore. And it was kind of this morbid, weird guess what? Every single one of those people is dead now. Because death, the Bible says, is coming to all of us. But because of Jesus, we don’t have to be afraid of death. I don’t want my kids to obsess over it or become paralyzed in fear about the specter of eternity.

I want my kids to know that if they know Jesus, death is not something that we need to be afraid of. I remember when my grandmother went home to be with the Lord and she was looking forward to seeing the Lord. She had been serving Him her whole life and she wanted to look at Him in the eye, stand before Him, face to face and hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” This is, it’s important for our kids to know there’s a difference between the death of a believer and the death of someone who doesn’t know the Lord Jesus. And so teach your kids how loved they are and how much God loves them, and then talk to your kids about it in a way that highlights the fact that they can have assurance of salvation. And that Jesus said that He so loved them that he sent His only begotten Son.

That whoever believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life. That’s God’s, it’s eternal life. That’s what it is. Eternal life is just that. And there’s no one, not even yourself who can take Christ’s God given gift to salvation away from you. And so you can take joy in it and you can pass that joy onto your children. Erin, that was a great question.

Noel says, “How do you juggle homeschooling high school when your teen gets a part time job?” Moment of silence for this, one of the most frustrating seasons of motherhood. She says, “My 14 year old daughter just got a part time job at a place she’s been wanting to work at for years. She just started ninth grade and I’m wondering how to balance getting her high school requirements in with her new job. I don’t want her to be overwhelmed, but I’m worried if we back off, she’ll get behind in school. Help this mama who likes checklists and is concerned about getting things just right. How do we find balance between life skills and academics and how can it not feel so anxious?”

Okay, so first of all, the anxiousness will go away when you realize every single one of us in the same boat, we all understand it. And actually nobody’s figured it out quite right. A couple things that come to my mind though Noel and I hope this helps you a little bit. I think our kids need to know and this is, I have a 14 year old daughter who wants to work right now and I have not let her get a job because my admonition to her is, “You got the rest of your life to be a grownup, you get to be 14 one time,” 14 is pretty young and so I would be more focused on, and obviously this isn’t a sin issue but I’m just saying for me we chose to focus more on our 14 year old accomplishing her schoolwork.

My kids don’t get jobs, real jobs as in clock in, clock out until they’re 16 because like you, my 14 year old’s also in ninth grade this year and it’s very hard to balance it. Also you have a very, you’re running out of time with her and I’m not trying to scare you but you are running out of time with her. And I think the time that you have with a 14 year old kid is absolutely of inestimable value. It’s absolutely invaluable. And so I would watch her attitude, watch her heart. If she’s struggling with her schoolwork, she doesn’t need the job. She does need to finish her schoolwork, she does need to have time with her mom and dad. And that time, there’s no hurry for her, she’s 14 there’s no hurry. I think don’t be in a hurry.

I understand your checklist and I would say the first thing you want to check off is her heart. How you guys doing for your time? All those things are important. And then don’t feel anxious because the Lord’s going to show you what to do. We’re all struggling through that. Noel, fantastic question.

Melody said, “I want to get involved in standing up for our kids and trying to stop the flash program in the battleground school district. My sister in law sent me your podcast and I was completely shocked. How can I help?” Okay, so first of all, Melody, I’m so happy that you heard the podcast and it makes you want to get off the bench and onto the battlefield. I’d encourage you, and I will link back to it in the show notes today, check out the group parents rights in education. There’s a Southwest Washington chapter, and for those of you who are not here in Southwest Washington, you can also get in the fight to stop flash from coming into your schools.

Comprehensive sex education, social emotional learning. You guys, oh my goodness. These are terminologies that you need to know. And this mom wrote me last week. She said, “Social emotional learning is a good thing.” Ah, no it’s not. I don’t understand why we’re having to come up all this social engineering stuff? Our kids are being social engineered into oblivion. I don’t understand why we’re doing this. Why can’t the schools go back to teaching, reading, writing and arithmetic? Why can’t we go back to teaching kindness? I don’t understand all this stuff. Anyway, it’s going to make me angry. Melody, thank you for wanting to get off the bench and onto the battlefield, start there, parents rights in education, start going to meetings. We have them here frequently at the Firmly Planted in Vancouver. And there’s lots of things that you can do to get involved. And so I’d say I would start there and obviously, and you mentioned this in your note to be praying as well.

All right, Carolyn writes, “Thank you so much for sharing the truth and standing for the truth. My teen son asked me what the biblical response is to smoking weed or vaping. I attempted to answer from the side of addiction, but then he said that caffeine, sugar, and alcohol can be addictive, but we don’t say those are sinful. How would you answer those questions?”

This is a great question, Caroline. Fantastic question. The Bible teaches us that God wants us to be focused on serving and glorifying Him in our life. But you can’t do that if you become a slave to something else. And that’s the point. When we talk to our kids about vaping or we talk to our kids about marijuana or anything, I can give you all kinds of medical reasons why vaping is bad. Hello? Read the news. Kids are dying from it. It just, it’s so funny to me. Oh that’s blueberry. That’s a blueberry flavored smoke. Okay. I’ve had this conversation with my own teens.

Anything that can lead us to addiction is, alcohol hello can be addictive and that can absolutely fall into sin. If you’re so addicted to sugar that you can’t get through a day without it, then absolutely it can be. If it’s causing you to be mastered by it and you’re losing control of your life. I don’t know very many people who are mastered by caffeine to the point where they can’t pay attention to their families and we can see the obvious problems with alcohol and marijuana, which makes you basically not care about anything. And if your son needs a lesson on what a smoking weed does, just tell him to come to Portland, Oregon or Seattle, Washington and just walk along the streets and he’ll see the very, very big downside to smoking weed.

The Bible talks a lot about what masters us and really that needs to be the topic to me, of conversation. I would take your son to Romans 6 and 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 because even though things in our lives have a God approved place, we can still sign ourselves up for slavery if we’re not careful. That’s a great question, Caroline. I really appreciate you bringing it in.

I have one more question that I’m going to get run in here because I’m overtime as usual. Man, you guys have such good questions. We love our church, but recently I felt uncomfortable in new situations. Now that our sixth grader is in youth group, they get to take several trips and retreats throughout the year. I’m not sure if we’re at a stage of needing to let go a little or if the trips aren’t really such a good idea. Our 11 year old has said the girls in her youth group are very materialistic. They wear crop tops and shorty shorts and use cuss words and text their boyfriends during church. This is not exactly the kind of behavior we want our kids to spend a lot of time around.

Okay, so first of all, anonymous, very, very good for you to see that your child will be influenced by the people that are around her. In Proverbs 12:26 it says, “The righteous choose their friends carefully, but the way of the wicked leads them astray,” and your Christian child can absolutely be led astray by hanging out with kids who aren’t walking with the Lord.

And how often is this happened in youth group? Do not even get me started. My husband was a pastor at a very large church long time ago and we did not let our kids participate. He was a pastor there and we didn’t let our kids participate in youth group. To me, I’d find out what’s going on at your youth group. Proverbs 27:17, “As iron sharpens iron so one friend sharpens another.” And I think the converse of that is to say, as one friend is dull so they get the other friend to be dull also. Proverbs 13:20, “Walk with the wise and become wise. Associate with fools and get into trouble.” Just because someone has labeled it a youth group, doesn’t mean it’s good for your kids. I’m going to say that again. Just because it’s labeled as a youth group and just because it’s labeled as a youth group from your church, doesn’t mean it’s good for your kids. And so you need to be careful in who your children are hanging around with.

Luke 6:40, you guys have heard me say this a 100 times, when a student’s fully trained, he’ll be like his teachers. He’ll be like his teachers. Good friends give wise counsel. You want your kids to be around good friends. All right, First Corinthians 15:33, “Don’t be misled. Bad company corrupts good character.” And so if your kids are around people with bad character, I don’t care if they’re at your church or at your school or wherever it is, I would definitely be limiting the time. Psalm 1, I’m just going to end with that. You guys, oh my goodness, the Bible is replete with warnings about who we hang out with, especially children. Psalm 1:1, “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked nor stand in the path of sinners or sit in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in His law he meditates day and night.”

I hope that helps you guys today. Thank you for those questions. Keep them coming. If you want to submit a question, you can go to heidistjohn.com/mailboxmonday. Please leave your name and a date in there so that we can see when that question was submitted. Please keep your questions short and sweet and to the point. It helps us to be able to get to them more quickly. We love you guys. We thank you so much for listening. Thank you for your prayers for this ministry and for joining us at MomStrong International. If you’d like to participate in our Christmas card Palooza and I hope you will, please send us your Christmas cards.

We would also love it if you would send year-end donations to us here at Firmly Planted Family. We are a nonprofit organization and your contributions help us to keep this podcast on the air. You can reach us at Firmly Planted Family, 11100 Northeast 34th Circle, Vancouver, Washington, 98682. Thanks for listening everybody and I’ll see you back here on Friday with some new friends of mine, the Creation Guys. You won’t want to miss it.

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Heidi St. John
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